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1

Simulation / Re: BMU + Smithy vs. BMU + Chapel

« on: September 18, 2011, 05:38:51 pm »

If you grant the BMU a Smithy, why not have the BMU Chapel also buy a smithy?  I bet that would make it a lot better/more consistent after it trashes a bunch of crap.

2

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Scrying Pool

« on: September 16, 2011, 01:18:45 pm »

If Secret Chamber happens to be in the mix, buy a couple of those too, pick up everything and discard them. It's a killer.

With more than one Pool and Chamber, you can discard all your extra actions to SC, draw them again with a single Pool, and repeat.  You need +1 action and +1 buy to make this worthwhile, but it happens.

3

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cards You (Don't) Buy When They're Embargoed

« on: September 10, 2011, 07:05:47 pm »

What about something like Gold or Province or Duchy?

4

Dominion Isotropic / playing all cash bug - Grand Market + Quarry

« on: September 07, 2011, 01:20:57 am »

I like how the "play all your safe cash" button speeds up the game.  Unfortunately, having drawn

Quarry, Quarry, Copper, Copper, Copper

on turn 5 I was ready to buy a Grand Market with both Quarries before I realized that the cash button had auto-played everything.  Log is here:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/06/game-20110906-220832-d1cb99b9.html

I know the button is smart enough to handle most GM situations, but this one seems to have slipped through.  Not sure if it's the double quarry or whether it's just counting the quarries as $1 instead of effectively $3 towards GM.

5

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: What's missing?

« on: August 23, 2011, 09:26:47 am »

Cellar?

6

Dominion General Discussion / Re: what's better than a torturer/village chain?

« on: August 15, 2011, 12:24:16 pm »

One category I forgot was other curse-givers to blunt the effect of torturers after the curses give out.  Here would be things like Swinder, Sea Hag, either Witch, etc.

7

Dominion General Discussion / what's better than a torturer/village chain?

« on: August 15, 2011, 11:54:07 am »

Suppose you're sizing up a new Kingdom in a 2 player game and you see both Torturer and an appropriate village (native, fishing, regular, hamlet, etc).  Having been on the wrong end of being tortured to death (and boredom), you want to make sure you don't lose to this strategy unnecessarily.  If it's going to be dominant, you should at least play it yourself too and flip a coin for whoever gets the better draws and/or first key Torturer hits.

What other cards in the Kingdom would cause you to avoid the Torturer strategy and pursue a different one?

Active defence:  Moat, Lighthouse, Watchtower?
Passive defence: Chapel, Ambassador, Remake, Masq, etc, for getting rid of curses?
A good offence: a better strategy without defence?  Gardens with IW, KC + Goons, etc.  Pick your favorite.

Perhaps out of novelty, you'd rather not play the Torturer strategy yourself if you think something else will be reasonably competitive (or better!).

8

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Cleanup on (a)Isle 4

« on: August 04, 2011, 01:33:29 am »

Along Fangz lines, 11 turns in the obvious way.

open Amb/Amb. 
Abbreviations: Estate (E), Copper (C), Ambassador (A), Island (I)
Notation: <> = separates cards drawn before shuffle from those after, deck size after turn [N]
Turn 1: CCCEE, buy A [11]
Turn 2: CCCCE, buy A [12]
Turn 3: ACCEE, remove EE  [10]
Turn 4: ACCCC, remove CC  [8]
Turn 5: CE <> CCA, remove E [7]
Turn 6: ACC<>CC, buy I [8]
Turn 7: AC<>CCI, remove CC [6]
Turn 8: ACC<>CI, remove CC [4]
Turn 9: A<>ACI remove A [3]
Turn 10: ACI remove C [2]
Turn 11: AI play Island

This is the fastest way you can get rid of your deck with Ambassadors and Islands, barring TR/KC, since after your opening 2 turns, you'll need 4 turns to remove the coppers, 2 turns for the estates, and 1 each to remove the Ambassador, buy an Island, and play the Island.  Using Islands is slower since you have to spend a turn buying them and another using them.  Yes the shuffling works out.

I realize the Ambassador solution may not be the one OP had in mind, given that one of the Ambassadors isn't removed to the Island matt.

9

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Gifts for the Natives

« on: August 03, 2011, 09:43:49 pm »

Just to clarify the one player puzzle, am I right that you're imagining we can have as many NVs as we want and one copy of another action card?  And then we're supposed to set aside all but 1-2 cards onto the NV matt?  I can think of solutions that are faster that use more than one copy of the extra action card or multiple other action cards (setting them aside eventually) for example, but I wasn't sure if this is what you had in mind.

10

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Gifts for the Natives

« on: August 03, 2011, 09:37:46 pm »

For multiplayer, Torturer seems ideal.  Montebank could also work, more slowly, ifyou were willing to have 4 curses set aside.

11

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Impossible score, version two

« on: August 01, 2011, 11:56:59 am »

The opponent gets an Ambassador to put all his cards back in the supply. Then I play Masquerade to exchange his Ambassador with a Curse.

Remember it's total score between both players, although your method does maximize that.  You may not have to give him a curse if you somehow drew and played all your cards before playing the last Masquerade, but I don't think that would ever be necessary since the max score will never want all the curses anyway (-10 is worse than +1 on 8 gardens).  I have to think a little more about whether there could be impossible scores below this max if you have to use some curses in your solution, but it seems unlikely.

12

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Impossible score, version two

« on: August 01, 2011, 11:47:18 am »

I agree with the above solutions (Timeisnotasmile, WanderingWinder) to the non-variable version.

13

Puzzles and Challenges / Impossible score, version two

« on: August 01, 2011, 10:45:38 am »

In a 2 player game, that lacks any kingdom cards that give VP chips (Monument etc), what is the smallest positive total score (sum of both players) that is impossible to achieve?

Edit: variable VP victory cards are allowed. 
Edit 2: you might also want to think about the solution in the case variable VP cards are NOT allowed.  This variation will probably be easier.

14

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: A drunken affair

« on: July 30, 2011, 04:54:23 am »

Don't you win on piles if you buy the last city and both silvers and golds are empty?  I'm not sure if that matters to your intended solution.

15

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Buy how many coppers?

« on: July 30, 2011, 04:38:45 am »

Targeting 3 colonies and 3 provinces for victory needs $57.  I'm going to be pessimistic and assume you only hit your 4 KCs singly, 2 on Cities and 2 on Nobles, and that you manage to draw your whole deck.   

This gives you a base of $12 from cities (it won't be worth playing the TR for $2 except on a City and I don't want to count on having an extra one).  Getting the extra $45 works out with 8 coppers and 2 quarries (worth $10 and banks for 11,12,13 for $46).  This needs only 8 coppers and adding a total of 11 extra treasure cards to your deck.  Given your deck has the ability to draw something like ~38 extra cards (depending on KC's) in a deck of 20 presently going up to 31, it seems pretty likely you'll manage to draw everything and win. 

16

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Perfect Hand

« on: July 28, 2011, 10:08:15 am »

I haven't looked at Blooki's yet, but mine was an improvement along Kirian's lines (which bent the rules similarly):

KC/KC/Trusty Steed/Trade Routex2
Kingdom: 7 green cards + Colony, TR worth 11.  KC, TR, and Tournament are the other 3.
For your 6 choices from the Steed, elect: cash x3 ($6), 4 Silver x1, +2 cards x2 (drawing the Silvers).  Now with 4 extra cards in hand, the first KC'ed TR doesn't trash the other TR and you get 6 TR's each worth a colony a piece.  The extra $6 from the Steed and your normal buy gets you a Duchy for 63 total.

I think this method can definitely be improved to gain additional cards outside of the excluded Ironworks/Workshop/University.

17

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Perfect Hand

« on: July 27, 2011, 09:16:49 pm »

OP - can you clarify something about how this card should work in your puzzle: Trade Route?

Specifically, do I need the Kingdom to be consistent with my hand?  For example, if my hand is going to be KC/KC/..., then I need a KC pile and that's one fewer that's available for green cards to fund the TR, right?  I normally make sure my hand could have gotten into the state it's in somehow during the course of a legal game.  Do you agree?

18

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Perfect Hand

« on: July 27, 2011, 09:08:25 pm »

I've got a novel solution for the no-Bridge version that's over 60.  Will post tomorrow, lest you think this challenge is done .

19

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Perfect Hand

« on: July 26, 2011, 04:44:57 pm »

I wasn't sure if Bridge was supposed to be excluded from your hand, but with it KC/KC/Bridge/Bridge/Bridge for $9 and -$9 costs in a Colony game gets you 4 Colonies ($2 each) and 6 Provinces ($0 each) for 66 points.

20

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Haven Puzzle

« on: July 22, 2011, 01:08:15 pm »

Harvest, played after the Haven.

If the new Haven isn't a duration, this will have short term effects on deck size and reshuffles (i.e. near the  bottom of your deck you could play the new Haven and then draw it again next hand).

21

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Small hand, big gain...

« on: July 20, 2011, 08:20:34 am »

Thisisnotasmile - thank you, yes I did intend the puzzle as you describe to be at the start of your turn.  OP edited to reflect this.

Kirian had the basic idea I was thinking about for this puzzle.  Here's a hint for my initial solution, but it clearly can be improved:

HINT only: Island, at least 20 VP gain

Detailed but not optimal solution:
Here's a solution with +24.

Your hand is a Forge, you play it to gain a copper.
Earlier using 7 KC'ed Islands, you set aside 21 cards: 8 gardens, 8 fairgrounds, and 5 other unique cards, and all of these currently are neither in your deck nor discard pile.  (the KC's were trashed with the Forge at some point)
At present, the set-aside cards amount to 28 total cards and 8 unique ones (+1 to each counting the Forge in hand).  After you play the Forge to gain a copper, your deck will go from 29->30 total cards (8 point gain from gardens), and from 9->10 unique cards (16 point gain from the fairgrounds).

Thoughts on improving this:

I play too much 2-player, so I didn't design the above solution with more than 8 of each green card.  You can probably do better along similar lines with an Ironworks or Trade Route to get a big Garden/Fairgrounds (maybe still buying a copper), but it's more contrived how your deck would end up in that state and the math on gardens/fairgrounds is hard enough as is.

22

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Riddle

« on: July 19, 2011, 10:06:23 pm »

The "only buy" clause does stop this from being a really ho-hum KC/Bridge puzzle at least!

I don't know about that, I think a KC/KC/KC/KC/IW start that gains enough Bridges will be gaining Nobles and Colonies with those IW's at some point....

23

Puzzles and Challenges / Small hand, big gain...

« on: July 19, 2011, 10:02:30 pm »

You have a single card in your hand, no other cards in your deck or discard pile, and no durations in play or cards on your Native Village matt.  How many VPs can you gain on this turn?

Edit: As mentioned later, I meant this to describe your hand at the start of your turn, not that you have played some cards from your hand already this turn.

24

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Tournament-shy

« on: July 18, 2011, 09:25:09 pm »

You want him to play Followers so you can trigger your menagerie, or village + watchtower.  Either allows you to ditch bad cards in hand for new ones.

25

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Grand Market

« on: July 18, 2011, 07:10:13 pm »

If you add Black Market to get the full 12 green cards into play, you can afford the 4th GM in multiplayer but I don't know if you can get 4 buys though.

I don't think the Black market can help out here.  I don't think there would be Trade Route tokens on victory cards in the BM deck, and you can't get Kingdom cards out of the BM until turn 3 when it is too late.

Hmm, seems you're right - Isotropic at least doesn't increase the TR count for BM buys.  In a multiplayer game, you could get the Kingdom cards out on an earlier person's turn 3 in time for your turn 3 later on.