mith 4-3 Antonidas
Game 1: Antonidas 51-33 mith
Game 2: mith 45-
46 AntonidasGame 3: mith 69-57 Antonidas
Game 4: Antonidas 20-
25 mithGame 5: Antonidas 30-30 mithGame 6: Antonidas 18-
39 mithGame 7: Antonidas 58-50 mith
Game 8: mith 43-33 Antonidas
My third 8 game match of the tournaments, eesh.
Game 1 - Oracle/Silver to open, and opponent gets a first shuffle Gold. I think the early Margrave for me is probably a mistake anyway (too many collisions), but Treasury/Treasury doesn't thrill me either (with Margrave eventually coming into play, stacking a bunch of them on top of my deck doesn't help as much). Anyway, I never recovered after that.
Game 2 - For some reason I decided Horn of Plenty would get me ramped up faster than Merchant Ship. I don't know what I was thinking. Anyway, I'm going for some sort of Farming Village/Conspirator/Horn of Plenty thing, with Goons of course, but he gets to the Goons so much faster that I'm struggling to catch up the whole game. Neither of us ever hits double Goons (though for my part, it's because I only had two and it took a while even to get those), so his Islands are key to hanging on long enough to three pile.
Game 3 - I was initially going for the golden deck combo, and got frustrated with my shuffles so I trashed my Chapel early and started buying some Ventures. Anyway, I ended up with a pretty consistent Province-buying machine, with one Colony thrown in for good measure. Meanwhile, he built up with Tactician, Expand, Throne Room, and Possession, not realizing at first that the Bishop points would go to me. He still nearly caught me with some double Possessions... not sure if there's a winning engine deck here, or if I just played Bishop/Chapel clumsily and let him back in it.
Game 4 - This one I definitely think the engine is better, so I was fortunate to steal it. My thinking was doubleJack initially with Mountebanks doing damage and Inn for actions (which works nicely with Jack anyway), but he Embargoed Jack so I only took one. In retrospect, Jack giving me all those Silvers is slowing me way down. Anyway, I start buying points wherever I can, including Harem - maybe rushing Duchy is better, I dunno. With Curses gone and Harems soon to follow, I see that Inn is getting low as well, and hope that I can finish it off before he catches me. It's close, but I'm helped by how large his deck is - he has to buy Inn sometimes to put his actions back on top and keep the thing going, and needs them for actions with all those terminals anyway. That said, I think just gaining one or two less would have been enough to catch me?
Game 5 - I had a cute idea here, with Steward trashing into Quarry/Market, but the additional actions weren't ideal - Tribute and Rabble. I finally hit a big turn at the end, needing two Provinces to tie, but until then I just wasn't getting good results with Tribute.
Game 6 - This was just an ugly game, I'm not even sure what happened in it. Watchtowers for protection against Mountebanks and IGG, Walled Village for actions, Pawn for hand-reduction for money... Spice Merchant and Loan for getting rid of Coppers, but even with that it was tough to get anything consistent going. Opponent bought a Mint early which I think was a mistake, as he had too little money (and still not a clean engine, with Estates and Curses). Anyway, once I had a lead in Provinces and saw how ugly my deck was getting, I started buying Duchies as often as possible, and emptied the Pawns when I couldn't do that.
Game 7 - I tried another combo I don't really understand (Horse Traders/Duke) while he went for Philosopher's Stone/Wharf. When looking at the board I glanced at Wharf and thought "Wharf is great, but terminal card draw isn't going to be fast enough against HT/Duke", and completely missed how much the +Buy would help. He managed to split the Duchies evenly, and I tried Silk Roads and Estates as a backup plan, but he was too fast.
Game 8 - A clear Vault/Tunnel board, but how to get there? I opted for Potion/Tunnel, with University to gain all the Vaults I could want, while he went Silver/Silver. I get the 5-3 Tunnel split (he could make it 4-4 on turn 9, but opts for Gold; hard to say this is the wrong play since he was behind on Golds as well, but the point swing was nice). Because of University, I don't have to buy a Vault all game, and can start winning the Duchy split as well, so even if I fail to draw Gold on my last turn I would go up 7 with a Duchy buy. Anyway, on top of everything else I had first player advantage, and this game had a really quick ending once we were up and running, with 8 Provinces in 9 turns combined.
Thanks for the series, Antonidas!