Dominion > Dominion General Discussion

Young Witch on a strong trashing board (and other questions)

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Robz888:
To be honest, Trader perplexes me. I don't think I play it very well.

mischiefmaker:

--- Quote from: Robz888 on March 02, 2012, 11:59:04 am ---Most other cards just slow down Jack's effectiveness buy colliding with it.

--- End quote ---
I'm fairly sure simulators have shown conclusively that this is not true. Cantrip +$, like Market, work great with Jack, and so do sifters.

I think many of us (myself included) got caught up in the simulator results and believed DoubleJack was the be-all. If I'm not mistaken the current consensus is that SingleJack + most cards you would buy if Jack were not on the board > DoubleJack. You just have to be a bit careful not to overload on terminals.


--- Quote from: Robz888 on March 02, 2012, 11:59:04 am ---I suppose you could pick up a Young Witch of your own if enough of your opponents don't buy Jacks, but it probably isn't worthwhile.

--- End quote ---
For example, SingleJack + Young Witch defeats DoubleJack handily, 60-37.

In a 2p game, I'd open Jack/Lookout, use the lookout to trash copper, pick up a YW with my next $4, and play BM from there. I don't know if this is the absolute best strategy, but I'm reasonably certain it will be competitive against human opponents (you might skip the lookout and get silver; I don't know because the simulator doesn't know to trash copper over estates early).

In a 3p or more game, your strategy has to be more dependent on what your opponents do. If nobody gets a YW, then Jack/YW is going to be very strong. In a 4p game, if two opponents get YW, you probably want a lookout to go with that. If all three opponents load up on YW, I might go doublejack double lookout and just outrace my opponents to 5 provinces, picking up a Remodel in the late game to speed things up.

Some sim results to back me up:
2Jack v 2Jack v 2Jack v Jack/YW: 18/19/19/36; Jack/YW clear favorite here
Jack/YW v Jack/YW v Jack/YW v Jack/Lookout/YW: 22/22/22/27; Lookout/Jack/YW a bit slower to ramp up but produces consistently better $ through the late game due to trashed coppers
2YW v. Jack/YW v Jack/YW v 2Jack/2Lookout: 12/21/21/40: Everyone else too busy giving curses; Jack/Lookout the favorite.
 
Also, it's worth noting that while there are tons of trashing options on this board, they're mostly pretty bad. Develop is horrible for dealing with Curses (spend an action to trash a curse and play with a 3 card hand - yuck), and Forge is pretty bad here too since there's no way to increase handsize and it's expensive. Remodel is similarly weak since you don't shrink your deck and the $2s don't seem to fit well with the rest of the board. Trader is OK, especially in multiplayer, but it anti-synergizes with itself -- the more Curses you deflect for Silver, the less likely you are to have Trader in your hand in the future (same if you use Trader on non-Curse/Copper).

Jorbles:
I'm not sold that Lookout is as great an enabler to DoubleJack as we seem to assume it is. If the Young Witch is ignored then Lookout/DoubleJack loses to DoubleJack 62/38 in the simulations that I ran on Dominiate anyways. My guess is that in addition to being a Silver ahead the whole game being a slight advantage I suspect the Coppers that get trashed by the Lookout actually help reduce variance in the end game. Here's the code I was using:

--- Code: ---# Opens Jack/Lookout then plays DoubleJack
#
{
  name: 'Look2Jack'
  author: 'Jorbles'
  requires: ["Jack of All Trades", "Lookout"]
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Province" if my.getTotalMoney() > 15
    "Duchy" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Estate" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Gold"
    "Jack of All Trades" if my.countInDeck("Jack of All Trades") < 2
    "Lookout" if state.countInSupply("Lookout") == 10
    "Silver"
  ]
}


--- End code ---

Duchess Ninja:
Thanks for the simulation runs - that is exactly the information I was looking for. After a few more games I've basically distilled it to Single Jack/Double Lookout with a couple of Pearl Divers (to set up both Jack and Lookout a little better) when I only have $2. Then trashing a Lookout when the Copper was gone. Double Jack is certainly better based on your sims.

Robz, I think you're right about Secret Chamber - it's just not strong enough here despite it also being the Bane card. Single Jack Double Lookout seems to get 4-5 Curses in a 3 player game, and a 1 Province advantage overcomes or ties the 5-6 you don't get. Throw in one more Duchy which I was consitently able to buy, and gg.

Does anyone have an answer to the Native Village a Curse question? Say the board only has Develop and you have a NV chain going getting all of your Victory Cards on the mat. Should you throw your Curses on the mat to thin your deck? Or just buy the crappy trasher and try to get rid of them? Or ignore them completely and try to draw through them?

dondon151:
It's pretty hard to reliably set away your Curses on the NV mat... but generally, it's a better move to just remove them from your deck as soon as possible through some way or another rather than to leave them in your deck. Generally the -1 VP from a Curse is not a huge deal compared to it just not being a useful card in your deck.

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