Quick-ish summary, because I'm tired.
Tournament format:
Morning was 4 rounds of 3-player, with each player getting a bye (so 3 rounds of play for each player). The end objective was to advance 9 players, but… there were only 10 players who made it, so really, we were all just trying to not place dead last.
Afternoon was 3 rounds of 3-player with the top 9 from the morning, with the player with the best “score” winning the tournament (not VPs). Score was handed out based on position after each game – basically, the player who performed the best overall.
Each table that we played at had an available set of cards to choose from (e.g., Base + Intrigue, Cornucopia + Hinterlands, etc.). Sets were generated randomly using the randomizer cards or using a randomizer app on someone’s phone.
Also, I don’t know everyone’s online username, so I’ll be using their real names here… if they don’t mind. I also apologize if I don’t remember whom I played against in what game; this stuff is hard to keep track of.
Morning rounds:
Because we were only competing to not be last, I’m not sure if all of us took these matches completely seriously… Some of these games I decided to just go with crazy stuff that might or might not have worked out.
Round 1: Pawn, Cellar, Chancellor, Feast, Gardens, Throne Room, Trading Post, Festival, Upgrade, Nobles
I didn’t have a very good impression of this set, because nothing seemed to jump out at all. I guess Pawn and Festival are decent facilitators for a Gardens strategy, but I absolutely hate going for a straight Gardens rush because they are just neither fast nor strong most of the time. There didn’t seem to be a good engine here either, with the only +cards being Nobles. I thought at first that something like Trading Post + BM would be pretty dominant.
But I love pairing Throne Room with +cards, especially when accompanied by light trashing – and who cares if Nobles is expensive? I went for it anyway, grabbing TR at $4, Upgrade/Festival at $5, and Nobles at $6, then got an engine running that generated up to $16 with multiple buys per turn. At that point the Provinces were running dangerously low, but the favorable Nobles split, in addition to the presence of Gardens, allowed me to prolong the game enough to let me roar by with a win. I came out on top with a final score of 45-40-39, with only 2 Provinces, but 6 Nobles and 7 Gardens worth 3 VP each.
Round 2: Trade Route, Bishop, Gardens, Feast, Militia, Thief, Mountebank, Counting House, Witch, King’s Court, Platinum, Colony
This round was brutal. Thankfully no one managed to hit a KC-Mountebank, but we were just cursing the living daylights out of each other. Once the smoke cleared and the Curses were gone, then we had to figure out how to rebuild our decks into a scoring position.
I had already committed beforehand to stocking up on Bishops and trashing away my somewhat-useless Mountebanks for VP, but I had neglected to consider that it slightly undid all of the gunking up that I did in the first place. Oops. One of my opponents and I each grabbed a Counting House, which yielded 1 Colony for each of us. Trade Routes were eventually worth $5 each and allowed us to more easily buy Duchies and Provinces, and Gardens took advantage of our huge, bloated decks.
After all that mess, no one had any idea who was ahead, but I suspected that I did not play this kingdom well. We ended with a score of 57-56-54, with me coming in dead last, but it was a lot closer than I had imagined it to be.
Round 3: Apothecary, Herbalist, Lighthouse, Ambassador, Philosopher’s Stone, Sea Hag, Tactician, Merchant Ship, Wharf, Outpost
My eyes opened wide when I saw Ambassador, Lighthouse, Tactician, and Outpost all in the same set – I love playing double Tactician, I love going for triple Tactician via Outpost, and Ambassador is a brutal complement to those decks. But double Tactician needs +$ and +actions, and there were no +actions, and the +$ cards weren’t cantrips, which would make it hard to get to $8 for double Tactician.
Then I saw Herbalist and Philosopher’s Stone, and I knew right away that Ambassador and Sea Hag were traps in this kingdom. I was hoping that my opponents would pick up these power cards on instinct and not consider that Herbalist + PS counters these attacks extremely effectively.
It seemed that Ed (ednever) had also considered this, and we both opened Potion/Herbalist. Our unfortunate third player, Ted, didn’t really seem to have a coherent strategy, but eventually picked up an Ambassador and a Sea Hag at some point. Upon his first play of Ambassador, he realized that he walked into a trap and that Ed and I benefitted to some extent from any of his attacks.
Ed and I played Herbalist/PS mirrors, with both of us nearly matching each other’s buys and deck sizes. On the last shuffle, Ed was able to pick up Province on both turns, whereas I had to settle for Estate/nothing on a couple of terrible draws, and Ed took this one, 39-32-22.
Afternoon rounds:
Serious business here. I was not particularly pleased with the decisions that I made in the 2nd morning round, but overall I was pleasantly surprised with how I did, considering that I hadn’t played Dominion in a long time.
Round 1: Herbalist, Cellar, Moat, Scrying Pool, Masquerade, Wishing Well, Upgrade, Minion, Trading Post, Apprentice
I had 2 options here: either I could go with the tried and true Masq-BM, or I could try doing something crazy with an SP engine. I immediately ruled out pure Minion strategies in 3 player games because there's never enough of them to go around, but you'd be surprised at how many presumably mid to high level players in these tournaments ignore it completely. There was light trashing in the form of Masq, Upgrade, and Trading Post; Herbalist gave a +buy, and Minion gave +$. I had never played with Alchemy cards before, and maybe I should have been a bit more conservative, but I went ahead with the SP strategy anyway. My opponents went with unfocused strategies involving some amount of Upgrade, Trading Post, and Minion.
I ended up with 6 SPs, trimmed my deck until it made exactly $16, and got 2 consecutive double Province turns, picking up a few more along the way. I nailed this one, coming in 1st at 48-33-27 with 7 Provinces and 2 Duchies.
I spoke to Joe, one of my opponents, after the game, and we both agreed that if he opened Trading Post instead of Minion on his 5/2 opening, that he probably would have had a much better shot at winning with a BM strategy. I don’t think he ever picked up more than 2 Minions throughout the entire game.
After this match, I made the dumb offhand remark about piledriving the Watchtowers in a different match, which caused a match to restart and prolonged the entire tournament by 30+ minutes. Oops.
Round 2: Chapel, Pawn, Wishing Well, Great Hall, Ironworks, Throne Room, Noble Brigand, Torturer, Harem, Border Village
Ed was my opponent again, and I knew that he was a very solid player, which meant that I had to play this match really well.
I opened 5/2 with Torturer/Chapel, and that’s all she wrote. I got to a comfortable Province lead in a kingdom with no +buy, we depleted the Curses and Torturers, and I picked up BV/Duchy to empty out the piles and cruise to a 29-16-2 win. Opening luck much? Yeah, that’s basically it.
Round 3: Duchess, Develop, Steward, Mining Village, Silk Road, Navigator, Noble Brigand, Saboteur, Merchant Ship, Ghost Ship
My FPS got the better of me again and decided that it wanted to try some convoluted Steward/MV/Ghost Ship engine. Meanwhile, I completely missed the Develop/SR synergy, which one of my opponents (Joseph) picked up on immediately. Eventually my engine kicked into gear and I was able to reliably draw $8 and play Ghost Ship every turn, which allowed me to pick up 5 Provinces and essentially prevented my other opponent, Tobin, from getting any. When there were 2 Provinces left, I began buying Duchies with $8 and $10 in an attempt to catch up. Well, that paid off, sort of – I got 4 Duchies, bought my 6th Province, then ended the game by buying my 5th Duchy, which was just enough to put me 3 VP ahead of Tobin. Joseph creamed us both with a very favorable split of the SRs and a metric asston of VP cards, winning 72-51-48.
I was just glad that I did not get 3rd place. With a 2nd place finish, all I needed was for Joe (my afternoon round 1 opponent) to not win at his table. It really looked like Ed was dominating at that table, playing several Saboteurs every turn and dominating the game, and Joe wanted to shake my hand in advance to congratulate me for moving on, but I insisted that he didn’t until the game was over.
I suppose I was right, because Ed ended the game, with all of the players thinking that he won…. And Joe got first with 12 VP to Ed’s 11 VP.
Well, crap.
Playoff
Jay had stated earlier that in the case of a tie after the afternoon games, the top players would engage in a tiebreaker playoff. Joe and I fully anticipated that we would compete in a head-to-head match, but Jay vehemently opposed a 2 player match and instead insisted that we play a 4 player match with the 2 players that tied for 3rd place. Naturally, Joe and I were a little miffed that instead of a true tiebreaker match, this was basically going to be a tossup that was probably going to be largely determined by turn position and the opening draw.
Playoff: Cellar, Chancellor, Woodcutter, Bureaucrat, Throne Room, Moneylender, Gardens, Witch, Mine, Laboratory
I have no idea how Jay determined this set, only that he determined that the set would consist only of Base set cards. This didn’t look like a very interesting set at all. Chancellor and Mine were absolutely terrible, the absence of engine potential was a counterindication to Moneylender, and you’d have to be pretty lucky to hope to match up TR with anything in a deck bogged down with Curses.
We randomly drew our positions, and I got 3rd position, much to my chagrin. Turns out that despite us having tied for 1st in the afternoon, Joe and I wouldn’t even get the benefit of advantageous seating positions (Joe drew 2nd position)! I didn’t have a good plan in mind and grabbed an assortment of sub-optimal stuff, and went for swingy things to help overcome a turn position disadvantage. I did manage to match up a TR to a Witch once, and Joe got even luckier, getting TR-Witch twice with no other support. Joseph, who was in 4th position, got a lucky 5/2 on his opening draw, but he wasn't that far ahead due to our luck with the TR-Witches.
As the game went on, I played a Witch, dealing out the last 3 Curses... and noticed immediately that someone had forgotten to pick up a Curse. We counted the number of Curses in our decks and argued for awhile about whom it should have belonged to by trying to count how many times we each played Witch. I think at some point, we determined that Joe most likely forgot to pick up a Curse, but at that point, Jay had already ruled that there should be a re-match, and Randy (who was in 1st position) had already dismantled his deck. So re-match it was.
This time, I got insanely lucky. I opened 5/2 with Witch/Cellar. Turn 3, I play Witch, draw 5 Coppers, and pick up a 2nd Witch. The other players got a couple more Golds than I did, but the Curse split says it all – I ended up with only 4 of the Curses and got lucky enough to make 3 Provinces, which decided the game in my favor: 32-25-24-19.