Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Game Reports => Topic started by: Glooble on December 28, 2011, 12:04:31 pm
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http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/28/game-20111228-085813-5290fdb4.html
I often try to open Mint unsuccessfully, but Duchess and Haven make surprisingly good partners for this strategy. The Haven lets you set aside your Mint until you have money you want to duplicate, and the Duchess, as well as keeping you from having to buy a copper, can help you discard the estates which will briefly be half your deck. Anyway, it's a possible use for what has been deemed the worst two card, so I thought I'd share.
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http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/28/game-20111228-085813-5290fdb4.html
I often try to open Mint unsuccessfully, but Duchess and Haven make surprisingly good partners for this strategy. The Haven lets you set aside your Mint until you have money you want to duplicate, and the Duchess, as well as keeping you from having to buy a copper, can help you discard the estates which will briefly be half your deck. Anyway, it's a possible use for what has been deemed the worst two card, so I thought I'd share.
I think Mint opening is strong with any $2 cost that gives money. The fact that Duchess gives 2 instead of 1 seems like it would be great for it. But even just Mint/Pawn seems pretty strong.
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I think Mint opening is strong with any $2 cost that gives money. The fact that Duchess gives 2 instead of 1 seems like it would be great for it. But even just Mint/Pawn seems pretty strong.
the best/worst openings list might disagree with that though. other than mint/fool's gold, no mint opening ranks very high. the trouble is that the strategy usually takes far too long to get going, and it won't hold up well unless you have something strong to transition into.
in this case, having some help from haven/caravan/duchess speeds it up a bit. and the longer colony game probably helps some too.
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It think non-FG mint openings are generally bad (not that they can't win, but there's usually something better to do), since you end up with most of your deck being useless (3 estates and a mint compared to 3 cards that give money). Duchess helps a bit with the filtering, and it being a colony game also helps because you have more time to build back up and the mint eventually becomes really good since there are platinums. So it's probably one of the better situations for opening mint, but I'm still doubtful it's the best play.
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I think Mint opening is strong with any $2 cost that gives money. The fact that Duchess gives 2 instead of 1 seems like it would be great for it. But even just Mint/Pawn seems pretty strong.
Mint/Pawn is worse than Mint/Curse on councilroom. Although, now that I look at Councilroom data, Mandarin/Mint seems like an extremely interesting opening; it's probably one of the few times two mediocre openings actually work out well together.
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I think Mint opening is strong with any $2 cost that gives money. The fact that Duchess gives 2 instead of 1 seems like it would be great for it. But even just Mint/Pawn seems pretty strong.
Mint/Pawn is worse than Mint/Curse on councilroom. Although, now that I look at Councilroom data, Mandarin/Mint seems like an extremely interesting opening; it's probably one of the few times two mediocre openings actually work out well together.
Interesting. Well I've only tried it once, with a 100% success rate. :P
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111107-082041-817ab801.html (http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111107-082041-817ab801.html)
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Mint/Pawn is worse than Mint/Curse on councilroom.
In all fairness, there can not be a statistically significant amount of data on Mint/Curse.
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I find the trouble with opening Mint / x is that you end up with a 7-card deck, out of which 4 are useless Estates and Mint, and thus a pretty good probability of not getting enough to buy Silver for, actually, a surprisingly long time.
In your case, Haven is just the right thing, since you can get it with $2 and it's great in this kind of deck. If there wasn't a good $2 buy, you could easily end up drawing $2 on turns 3 and 4 and 5... With Mint/Pawn, you only effectively have $3 total, so it's even worse.
P.S. Haven is not one of the worst, it's one of the best.
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I find the trouble with opening Mint / x is that you end up with a 7-card deck, out of which 4 are useless Estates and Mint, and thus a pretty good probability of not getting enough to buy Silver for, actually, a surprisingly long time.
In your case, Haven is just the right thing, since you can get it with $2 and it's great in this kind of deck. If there wasn't a good $2 buy, you could easily end up drawing $2 on turns 3 and 4 and 5... With Mint/Pawn, you only effectively have $3 total, so it's even worse.
P.S. Haven is not one of the worst, it's one of the best.
Huh? Haven is one of the worst things to open 5/2 with mint because you only have $2 total in your deck, so you literally have to buy or mint a copper to get up to 3, then get the $3 together, then get rolling... it's totally not worth it.
I simmed all the (reasonable) 5/2 mint openings last summer (don't have the bots any more, sorry; also, this was, of course, pre-FG), and IIRC, they're all better (the ones with any kind of money producer) than going money on a 5/2, and ones like lighthouse and pawn were a bit better than having 4/3 and going money. But none of them were really great. Now, in a deck that wants to do some massive action stuff, or in some kind of heavy attack scenario where you want a lot of lighthouses, this might be totally awesome. But generally, if it's the best you can do, you're probably in trouble.
Of course, Mint-FG IS a beast of an opening.
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I find the trouble with opening Mint / x is that you end up with a 7-card deck, out of which 4 are useless Estates and Mint, and thus a pretty good probability of not getting enough to buy Silver for, actually, a surprisingly long time.
In your case, Haven is just the right thing, since you can get it with $2 and it's great in this kind of deck. If there wasn't a good $2 buy, you could easily end up drawing $2 on turns 3 and 4 and 5... With Mint/Pawn, you only effectively have $3 total, so it's even worse.
P.S. Haven is not one of the worst, it's one of the best.
Huh? Haven is one of the worst things to open 5/2 with mint because you only have $2 total in your deck, so you literally have to buy or mint a copper to get up to 3, then get the $3 together, then get rolling... it's totally not worth it.
Yeah, sorry for the unclarity, I meant that the OP made reference to two of the worst cards in general, but only Duchess makes that list; Haven doesn't.
After making my post, I did some math. With Duchess you actually have a 2/3 chance of $3 on turn 3, with Pawn it's 10/21, and with Lighthouse it's 2/7. At least with Pawn and Lighthouse, though, you can probably get another one if you only hit $2.
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I think what the OP meant by "the worst two card" was "the worst $2-cost card" i.e. Duchess. I completely understand your confusion though as the first time I read it I thought he meant "the worst two cards" and I said to myself "Okay, Duchess is bad, but Mint's definitely not one of the worst cards in the game". I only worked out what he meant when I went back to read it now.
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That is what I meant - one of the worst cards that cost 2 coin to purchase.