Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: rspeer on December 18, 2011, 07:22:03 am

Title: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: rspeer on December 18, 2011, 07:22:03 am
One of the inscrutable statistics over on CouncilRoom.com, "win rate given avail", will tell you how likely you are to win a game with each given card in it. Let's suppose you get to play a game with your best 10 Kingdom cards on this list. That's your dream board. How do you play it? Now do the same thing for the worst 10 cards, your nightmare board.

To see this, go to the increasingly misnamed "Popular Buys" page on councilroom.com (http://councilroom.com/popular_buys). Type your name into the first search box, the one that says "search by player", and hit enter. This should add a bunch of columns about your statistics on the right. One of those columns is your "win rate given avail". Click the header to sort by it.


Here's my best board:

$5  Jester
$4  Coppersmith, Walled Village, Spice Merchant, Talisman
$3  Trade Route, Woodcutter, Smugglers
$2  Hamlet, Pawn

I'm pretty sure that the only action cards I would actively buy in this kingdom are Jester and Pawn. Besides that I'd aim for Big Money, though "Big Money/Jester" is not a well-defined strategy because you have to adapt it to whatever ends up in your deck. Maybe I'd pick up a Hamlet or WV if I ended up with too many terminals because of my Jester or my opponent's. This board mostly involves being adaptable, and picking the right time to start greening, which I think I can do.


Worst board*:

$5  Highway, Archivist, Haggler
$4  Noble Brigand, Bridge
$3  Tunnel, Scheme, Oasis
$2  Chapel, Fool's Gold

This board is telling me two things: "you're bad at Hinterlands", and "you're bad at combos". Thanks, board, way to make me look like a noob.

But it's probably right. My reaction upon looking at this kingdom is "buhhhhhh". But let me think through it.

Of course I need a Chapel, and I'd probably open Chapel/Silver. Now there's the fan card Archivist on the board, and I remember it being described as a "one card combo card", so loading up on Archivists in a chapeled deck is
probably good. Especially because it does something slightly useful with Chapel (discards it for $1) after it has served its purpose.

Is Archivist/Oasis a combo, or just redundant? I might pick up an Oasis just to try it. But most notably I'm discarding all the  time, so once I have an Archivist I'd probably start buying Tunnels. Which have a significant threat of clogging my chapeled deck, but Archivist/Tunnel just sounds way too good to pass up. And that sounds like an argument for more Oases later.

Oh, and I need a Bridge, as my one terminal, for +buys. With which I'd probably buy even more Tunnels while it's possible. This game might empty the gold pile. And wouldn't Highways go well with Bridge? Well, I don't know. I don't think I have time to buy them among everything else I'm trying to do.

I'd probably pass entirely on Fool's Gold. The deck is going to be too full of tunnels and real Gold. Archivist sounds initially like a good way to find two FGs to pair up, but that only actually works if you get two Archivists to pair up!

Now show me why I screwed that up entirely.


*I cheated a bit. Jack of All Trades is, remarkably, on my worst list, and I skipped over it. I think this is due to a phase where I desperately tried to find ways to not buy it. I've got a bunch of games where I didn't buy a Jack, and my win rate in these games is an abysmal 0.44. If you put Jack in this kingdom instead of Oasis, you get a predictably boring board that's dominated by DoubleJack, so let's not.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: DG on December 18, 2011, 07:51:38 am
Have fun with my "best board".

6$ - Border Village, Grand Market
5$ - Tactician, Merchant Ship
4$ - Bureaucrat, Mining Village, Sea Hag, Spy, Young Witch
3$ - Village, Woodcutter (bane)

Ouch. My worst board is seemingly hinterlands cards, all of them.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: WanderingWinder on December 18, 2011, 08:18:47 am
Best
Archivist (I'm going to throw this out, with 4 games, which I think is actually like 2 plus artifacts...)
Oasis
Walled Village
Cache
Ill-Gotten-Gains
Silk Road
Haggler
Farmland
Philosopher's Stone
University
Governor

I'm probably playing a fairly straight IGG rush here, maybe dipping for farmland and/or silk road depending on what my opponent does.

Worst Board
Spice Merchant
Tunnel
Noble Brigand
Platinum
Colony
Steward
Minion
Stables
Ghost Ship
Caravan
Torturer
Hunting Party

Here I'm probably going for a minion/tunnel deck, with an early steward for trashing and eventually some caravans. And I want platina, even with the minion engine, but I'll probably green decently early.
Actually, thinking more, I might forego the minions and go more steward/BM. I'd pick up tunnels and Hunting Parties if my opponent heads for minion and ghost ships otherwise.
But there is a reason these are my worst cards.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Thisisnotasmile on December 18, 2011, 08:48:09 am
My Best Board:

$5 Haggler, Margrave, Cartographer, Mine
$4 Spice Merchant, Nomad Camp, Gardens
$3 Oracle, Masquerade
$2P Apothecary

Depending on my mood I might play this a couple of different ways. First thing to note is there are no Villages and in fact there are hardly any non-terminals at all either.

No matter what I do, I'll probably be spamming Apothecaries. Apothecary is such an underrated card but I love it because it's the perfect alternative to trashing your starting cards (it effectively removes 7/10 of them from your deck, while not actually taking away the benefit that they would otherwise provide you). Since I'm ignoring trashing (i.e. Masquerade. I have no idea why Mine and Spice Merchant are here, maybe because other people don't ignore them 95% of the time like I do because they are so terrible) Gardens immediately stand out as a strong route to take. Since I plan on having a big deck I don't mind picking up a few extra terminals and on this board I'm talking Margrave, Haggler and Nomad Camp. With a $4 opening I'll pick up Nomad Camp aiming for Margrave with $5 or Potion with $4, I'll pick up Silver with any $3 turns but I'm not that fussed because I'm aiming to use Apothecary to get most of my buying power.

Once I've got 1 each of my 3 terminals I'll start picking up Gardens with 4 with Copper or Silver if I have +buy or Haggler in play. I'll take a couple of Cartographers with $5 after the Gardens have gone to keep my deck moving and an extra Potion if there are still a significant number of Apothecaries left. Then just spam +buys and Haggler gains until I empty Gardens/Apothecary/Estate.

Alternatively, I'll start as above aiming for a couple of strong terminals and spamming Apothecaries, but if my opponent picks up a Masquerade early I have a choice. Either I carry on for Gardens with the safety net that he's trashing so even if he snipes a couple, they're not going to be worth much, or I switch to Provinces. I might do this because I'm inevitably going to be passed some Coppers. All I need is one extra Copper in my deck and I can suddenly afford Provinces (although if I already have Haggler or Nomad camp I can already afford Provinces, but the extra Copper is just fuel for my Apothecaries). The extra Buys I have from Margrave/Nomad Camp can let me pick up extra Apothecaries or tie-breaking Gardens during the game. Haggler will allow me to do stuff like Province -> Gold.

Finally, if I've lost a few games recently and just want to get a win on the board no matter what, there's always Masquerade Big Money, but I'll avoid that if at all possible.

My Worst Board:

$6 Hoard
$5 Inn, Mint, Saboteur, Stables
$3P Philosopher's Stone
$3 Steward, Swindler, Watchtower, Scheme

Archivist is apparently my 3rd worst card but I have omitted it because a) I don't even know where to put it because I don't know how much it costs, b) I don't know what it does so I can't analyse it and most importantly, c) I've never played a single game with it.

I'd probably lose this because I'd get too mixed up with which cards I want/need and when I want/need them. I'd probably ignore Steward because trashing is lame and instead go for a Stables draw engine (which is way too slow because there's no +buy to catch up with later) with Hoards for money. I'd take a Swindler and probably hit only Estates for the first 10 turns while all of my Stables get swindled into Duchies and later on Mints or my Coppers turn into Curses and then my Stables have no fuel. Maybe pick up a Scheme or two with $3 hands to keep Stables on my deck (which will inevitably end up givng me a draw of Stables, Stables, Stables, Estate, Estate) and maybe a Watchtower to defend against Swindler.

But yeah, I'd definitely lose this game.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Elyv on December 18, 2011, 11:23:30 am
Best Board:
$6P Possession
$5 Mountebank, Ghost Ship, Mandarin, Contraband
$4 Bureaucrat, Spice Merchant, Pirate Ship
$3 Chancellor
$2 Chapel

Seems like a really boring board, grab a chapel and a mountebank or two and, well, that's about it. It's interesting to me that the only cards on that list that I buy more than 65% of the time are Mountebank and Chapel, and 4 cards on it are under 10%.

Worst Board(ignoring archivist):
$6 Farmland, Border Village
$5 Cache, Inn
$4P Golem
$4 Coppersmith
$3 Develop, Scheme, Oracle
$2 Fool's Gold

This looks like a pretty bad board too, and it's filled with cards that I've only played 20-30 games with. I have no idea what I'd do here; maybe pick up a ton of fool's golds and an oracle plus a scheme or two/go big money with oracle? I don't really see anything else.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: TheMathProf on December 18, 2011, 11:24:56 am
Best Board:

Colonies/Platinums in play (these tie for 9th)
$7  Expand
$6  Fairgrounds
$5  Embassy, Highway, Haggler
$4  Worker's Village, Smithy
$3  Menagerie, Steward, Trade Route

The funniest thing to me about this arrangement of cards is that I regularly veto Expand because I can't stand it.  :)

Fairgrounds are a much weaker card with the Colonies/Platinums in play.  It doesn't look like a particularly Action heavy board, but I probably do buy a Haggler and a Steward (initially for trashing).  Probably also a Smithy or Embassy.  A few Worker's Villages, not so much for the +2 actions, although it could come in handy with the 2-3 terminals in the deck but more for the +buy.  Using the Haggler to gain Worker's Villages and Menageries are probably decently strong.

Worst Board:

$6  Farmland
$5  Cartographer, Governor, Ill-Gotten Gains
$4  Spice Merchant, Pirate Ship, Nomad Camp, Jack of All Trades, Farming Village
$2  Duchess

Seems like a decent board for Jack, although I've been tempted a lot with Ill-Gotten Gains lately (these are the only two cards where my Effect With is -0.10 std dev better than the mean or better).
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: hobo386 on December 18, 2011, 12:22:06 pm
Top 10:
1)Saboteur
2)Navigator
3)Shanty Town
4)Royal Seal
5)Possession
6)Black MarketPearl Diver
7)Quarry
8)Lookout
9)Jack of All Trades
10)Workshop

I'm ignoring Black Market, since I don't know what is in it...  Overall this is a boring board, and most of these cards like Saboteur I'm something like 1.6 Win Rate without and 1.0 win rate with (royal seal notable exception, I have a 1.89 WR with).  I'd probably open JoAT+Shanty Town, then play doublejack from there.  Pick up a royal seal at $5, I suppose, but play it straight other than that.

Worst 10:
1)Hoard
2)Nobles
3)Duchess
4)Stables
5)Embassy
6)Trader
7)Rabble
8)Hunting Party
9)Oracle
10)Tournament

Boards like this are why I have such a bad win rate with tournament.  When I get a board with warehouse, chapel, or remake, I can pull off tournaments like everyone else. On boards like this, I end up with 3 provinces to my opponents 1, and he ends up with all the prizes, then proceeds to kick my ass somehow. My first thought is to open trader/silver Province>Hoard>1 Embassy>silver, to buy victory cards when I have a hoard and trash them with trader when necessary.  My other thought is to ignore Hoard and go for a HP strategy with 2 gold, HP at $5, tournament at $4 and a few silver, hoping my opponent doesn't get lucky and pull the same thing off but one turn faster and with better shuffle luck.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: olneyce on December 18, 2011, 12:25:06 pm
Best board

$5
Ill-Gotten Gains
Haggler
Governor
Stables
Embassy
Mandarin
Inn

$4
Spice Merchant
Trader

$3
Scheme

That's really boring. All that says is that my play has improved substantially in the past couple months, so Hinterlands cards are all at the top.

Worst board

$6P
Possession

$5
Counting House
Venture
Minion
Trading Post

$4
Ironworks
Tournament
Quarry

$3P
Familiar

$3
Watchtower

That's much more interesting.  And it has some of my absolute least favorite cards.  Possession, Familiar, and Tournament are three of approximately 6 cards that I regularly veto.

I suppose you have to go for Familiars, but should you buy Watchtower as a counter?  There's no +action unless you get Trusty Steed.  There's no +buy, which makes Quarry a lot less useful.  Minions are a lot weaker in a deck clogged with curses, but that might still be the best strategy.  Ventures skip over curses but the only trashing is Trading Post, which is expensive and slow.

Yes, I would almost certainly lose on this board.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: DrHades on December 18, 2011, 12:33:03 pm
"Best" board:

$7 Expand
$6 Grand Market, Border Village
$5 Embassy, Royal Seal, Cartographer
$3 Lookout, Tunnel
$2 Courtyard, Native Village

Well, Embassy/Cartographer+Tunnel combo is pretty obvious + getting the Embassy with free village sounds really yummy :) Then after some Golds comes in, GM is my choice and maybe even some Expand on the way...OTOH - I would watch my opponent very closely, because this game might end very quickly since gold is so easy to get and no Colonies on the board.

Opening? Tunnel/Lookout and let's rock'n'roll  :P

"Worst" board:

Colonies and Platinums in play

$2 Herbalist (Bane)
$3  Village, Wishing Well, Masquerade
$3P Alchemist
$4  Militia, Young Witch, Sea Hag
$5  Council Room, Wharf, Duke

Since Herbalist is a bane I would go for Alchemist/Herbalist combo and ignore the attacks. And that is why I would lost this one. But I am glad that Duke moved to #10, it was in my bottom 3 for a long time, finally I know a little how to play that dude.

Thanks to this thread I found out 2 things I didn't know before:

1.
Attacks in "best"? 0
Attacks in "worst"? 4 - all of them for $4 or less.
This is interesting. I probably want to buy $5 so much I miss a strong attack below and then I lost because of this mistake  ;D

2.
If you read REALLY carefully (did anyone? I don't think so), you would notice that my "worst" board has Colonies and Platinums but not even 1 card from Prosperity. I think this means that I am bad at making good engines (that can get Colonies) without strong cards like KC, GM or Expand...and it is probably true - I am offen going for Provinces waaaaay too early and with Colonies on the board, I am helpless...
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE on December 18, 2011, 12:57:33 pm
Here's my "best" board (in order of my win rate):

Scheme
Goons
Fool's Gold
Spice Merchant
Black Market
Governor
Scrying Pool
Ghost Ship
Transmute
Possession

On this board I'd open Potion/Black market and try to spike some villages and load up on Scrying Pools. My next action buy would be Spice Merchant, and I'd try to have Goons be the only other terminal in my deck if I couldn't get a village.

If you cut Black Market, the next card down for me is Quarry, which makes this board harder to evaluate. I feel like it makes Scrying Pool less viable because there's no actions that generate money (except Goons which is terminal). I might open Spice Merchant/Fool's Gold and try to rush Fool's Golds with a Goons to cap it off.

Kind of disappointing board. Scrying Pool is my favorite card in Dominion and it's not that great on either of these boards, and I also hate Fool's Gold and Possession and have no idea how they're on there.

My "worst" board:

Contraband
Wishing Well
Throne Room
Jack of All Trades
Merchant Ship
Caravan
Tunnel
Crossroads
Stables
Island

(Archivist was at the bottom but I don't even know what it is so I cut it.)

I mean, I guess Jack of All Trades is the fastest deck. It doesn't look like any of the other possible strats are both faster and more reliable. If you cut Jack, the next card up is Silk Road, which makes some kind of Crossroads 3-pile strategy possible, but is still kind of hurt by no +buy (except Contraband). Maybe the strat on that board is to buy Contraband, and your opponent can't block you from all the stuff you wanna buy (silks, islands, tunnels) so you just buy around what they call.

My boards suck, what a let down.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: jonts26 on December 18, 2011, 01:02:14 pm
My Best Board

$2 Chapel, Pearl Diver, Herbalist (Bane, my next highest $2-3 card)
$3 Masquerade
$4 Young Witch, Silk Road, Noble Brigand, Talisman
$5 Mountebank, Hunting Party, Wharf

This would be a lot more interesting with a good village type. But as it is? Probably open Young Witch/Chapel, moving into a Hunting Party Stack. I may buy a Mountebank later and trash the YW depending on how the game goes. Mountebank is a much better card to have in a strong Hunting Party deck, but the early cursing from Young Witch with the bad bane card is too good to pass up. Also what the heck are Talisman and Noble Brigand doing there?

My Worst Board

$2 Crossroads
$3 Oracle, Develop
$3P Philosopher's Stone
$4 Trader
$5 Haggler, Carographer, Vault, Treasury, Highway

Very Hinterlands heavy, as has been the case with a lot of people. Also, clearly my experiments with Trader and Develop have not gone well. This isn't a very good board for Crossroads so pretty much everything south of $5 is going to be ignored. Highway is strictly inferior to treasury without +Buy. Haggler is probably decent, but not great here. Most likely I'd go Vault/BM with Cartographer for card organization so I get good vault draws.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: chwhite on December 18, 2011, 01:06:12 pm
Worst board:

$5: Governor, Cartographer, Mandarin, Explorer, Venture
$4: Bureaucrat
$3: Woodcutter, Scheme
$2: Duchess, Crossroads

Technically Archivist is my second-worst card at even (I lose more often than I win with Governor out); but it's only even because I've never actually played Archivist, so there you go.

Anyway, this board is some crap, filled mostly with weak cards that I historically have ignored even when they're good and misplay when I go for them.  Duchess is just taking up space, Woodcutter probably is too.  With Bureaucrat and Explorer we have two pillars of crappy Silver-based decks, which I've historically floundered with (and ignored even more often than I should).  Venture was for a long time my very worst card, as I thought it was really weak (and lost to good Venture strategies) and even after I started going for it didn't do it very well.  (I still think Venture is overrated).  Crossroads was a trap for me when it first came out; Mandarin I haven't figured out either.

The winning strategy here is probably mass Governors for Gold gain leading into massive draw and remodel them into Provinces.  Greening early and getting Cartographer and/or Crossroads probably helps too, and I'd even consider opening Bureaucrat since the attack is likely to actually be relevant.  But whatever I do I wouldn't be at all confident in my plan.


Best board:

$8: Peddler
$6: Goons, Adventurer
$5: Inn, Ghost Ship
$4: Bishop
$3: Menagerie, Black Market
$2P: Scrying Pool
$2: Fool's Gold

Holy Goons engine, Batman!  Actually this isn't the very best setup for mega-Goons, since Inn is the only Village and Bishop is the only trashing, but Scrying Pool and Peddler and Menagerie all give big boosts to this approach.  Menagerie has my very best Win Rate With; I go hard for Menagerie almost all the time and it almost always works out; it's a beast of card and with Goons, Pool, and Ghost Ship it's bound to hit often here.  Pool and the Ship are two very strong cards that I do a good job of ignoring in unfavorable situations (and Black Market is a normally weak card that I can often extract extra value from); I think Pool is probably the only card of the three I'd want here, since one Bishop and several Goons is more than enough terminals for this deck.  VP chips are powerful and suit my style well, and we've got two of the three chip-givers here; Adventurer and Fool's Gold are on this list because they suck (especially in this setup!) and I'm good at ignoring them; no the recent "Fool's Gold is better than Silver!!!1!!one" simulation data is going to convince me to buy it here (or, really, in most setups).  It's just going to convince me the simulator shouldn't be blindly trusted.


Tl;dr: I'm bad on boards where you need to mass Silver and green early; I'm good at getting the "Who needs green cards anyway?" achievement.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: chwhite on December 18, 2011, 01:07:32 pm
Kind of disappointing board. Scrying Pool is my favorite card in Dominion and it's not that great on either of these boards, and I also hate Fool's Gold and Possession and have no idea how they're on there.

Probably because they're way weaker than their reputation and you're good at ignoring them?
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Fabian on December 18, 2011, 01:13:15 pm
Best:

$5 Mandarin, Highway, Embassy, Stables, Inn
$4 Jack of All Trades, Island, Nomad Camp
$3 Scheme
$0P Transmute

This list is pretty hilarious to me, as it consists of 7 cards I'm pretty much actively trying to avoid, and 3 cards I like.

As for strategy.. DoubleJack anyone? I kinda doubt some Inn/Embassy/Nomad Camp combination would speed it up, then again I often seem to overvalue DoubleJack so I'm sure I'm dead wrong :)

Worst:

$6P Possession
$5 Hunting Party, Royal Seal
$4 Noble Brigand, Walled Village, Spice Merchant, Bridge
$3 Menagerie, Trade Route
$2 Moat

Probably Bridge/Silver, load up on Hunting Parties, buy a Gold, hope for some double Hunting Party turns or something?
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: rod- on December 18, 2011, 01:45:19 pm
Best:

Farmland
Highway Margrave Torturer
Jack HorseTraders PirateShip
Menagerie
Crossroads Scrying Pool

Don't really see this being much other than a doublejack; there arent any good handsize-decreasing actions besides torturer, no villages, etc...I'd be jackin' it.  Without jack, it's a 3 terminal crossroads deck, probably torturer.

Worst:

BorderVillage
Archivist Embassy MerchantShipStashRabble
TraderIronworks
Oasis
Duchess

As evidenced by my failure in the tournament, (honestly, almost this exact board was present), I'd try to build some sort of embassy/bordervillage/oasis engine when clearly the best strat is just embassy/BM.  My biggest problem is playing BMX decks.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Titandrake on December 18, 2011, 02:01:53 pm
Best Board:
$7 King's Court
$5 Haggler, Cache, Library, Treasury
$4 Bureaucrat, Mining Village
$3 Wishing Well
$2P Apothecary
$2 Haven

Huh. Wasn't expecting that. I've never tried Apothecary/Cache before, so I'd probably try that. Maybe pick up a KC along the way for KC-Apothecary, and a Haggler or two to give pseudo +Buy.

Worst Board:
$5 Embassy, Cartographer
$4 Silk Road, Spice Merchant, Noble Brigand
$3 Fortune Teller, Develop, Scheme, Oracle
$2 Cellar

Yeah I really don't know how to use Cartographer, and I keep trying to not play Embassy-BM when I really should. I've experimented with Noble Brigand recently, and it's not bad, but I'm probably playing it a bit wrong. Eh, I'd still do Embassy-BM, hope that it gets more money than Brigand steals.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Elyv on December 18, 2011, 02:09:19 pm
Just for fun, I thought I'd see how this would work for isotropic as a whole.

Overall Winrate with(for isotropic as a whole):

Best(ignoring Prizes, colonies on the board):
$6 Grand Market
$5 Mountebank, Witch, Ill-Gotten Gains, Hunting Party, Venture(?!), Ghost Ship, Wharf
$3P Familar
$3 Masquerade

What a nice, friendly board. I think I'd open Silver/Masquerade, and grab a mountebank early. After that it gets a little trickier. I'm pretty sure you want a second masquerade at some point, but do you want Wharf? Do you want a second Mountebank/Witch? Do you take HP over Gold(I suspect no, but I'm not sure)? I'm really not sure.

Worst:
$5 Counting House, Saboteur
$4 Thief, Coppersmith, Bureaucrat, Pirate Ship, Talisman
$3 Workshop, Chancellor
$0P Transmute

Seems like a good Pirate Ship board; grab a couple quickly, and try to build up to provinces. Not really a whole lot else to say.

Overall Winrate without(for isotropic as a whole):

Best:
Note: silver is in second here


$5 Saboteur, Highway
$4 Pirate Ship, Throne Room, Bridge, Talisman, Walled Village
$3 Black Market, Smugglers
$2P University

This actually seems like an interesting board; all it needs is a little card draw or trashing to be really strong(and you might be able to find it in the black market). I think I would try to go for some sort of Highway/TR/Bridge based deck, maybe mixing in Talisman, smugglers, and/or Walled Village. Saboteur might even  be worth getting to trash their provinces, although I think this board will be too much about one big turn.

Worst:
Colonies are present
$7 King's Court
$6 Goons, Grand Market, Nobles
$5 Mountebank, Witch, Hunting Party, Wharf
$4 Tournament
$3P Familiar

Um, Mountebank into Goons-Based deck? seems like a pretty straightforward concept, although building it might be tricky. Probably the person who wins is the first one to King's court a mountebank/witch/wharf.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: kn1tt3r on December 18, 2011, 02:10:55 pm
Best Board:

$6: Hoard
$5: Haggler, Cartagropher, Upgrade, Wharf
$4: Cutpurse, Ironworks, Farming Village
$3: Workshop
$2: Hamlet

Interesting Choice between straight Wharf/Money or a Wharf/Haggler/Village engine. Probably Haggler makes the engine option a bit better because you build it up much faster.


Worst Board

$6: Harem
$5: Cache, Venture
$4: Bishop, Silk Road, Feast
$3: Swindler, Shanty Town
$2: Embargo, Pearl Diver

Looks like a simple Bishop/Swindler/Money board.
Obviously I'm bad at some of these alternative VP possibilites. Silk Road and Bishop have indeed killed me several times. Would have really expected Governor though.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: AJD on December 18, 2011, 02:48:55 pm
Best board:
$6p Possession
$5 Cache / Governor / Highway / Ill-Gotten Gains / Mint / Stables / Witch
$4 Noble Brigand
$3 Develop

That's totally not the set of cards I would have expected to be my best win-rate-given-available. I guess I'd open Silver/Silver to get a Witch after the reshuffle, spend future $5s on Stables and (until the curses run out) IGGs, and then try to hurry for Provinces; if my opponent buys a Potion I'll start grabbing Duchies as well and maybe try to run out the curseless remaining IGGs, if there aren't too many left, and three-pile it.

Worst board:
$6 Adventurer
$5 City / Mandarin
$4 Bishop / Monument / Navigator / Quarry
$3p Familiar / Philosopher's Stone
$2 Fool's Gold

Cities are going to be important here since the Curses are likely to run out. I guess I open Potion/Silver so I can hand out my share of Curses, get a Monument or two when I have $4 turns and Cities with $5, and see where it goes from there.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Wingnut on December 18, 2011, 03:33:35 pm
Best board:
$6 Farmland
$5 Governor, Highway, Mandarin
$4 Jack of all Trades, Nomad Camp, Ironworks
$3P Familiar
$3 Menagerie
$2 Crossroads

This looks like go for double Familiar and spam Governors, maybe an early Menagerie for later in the game and then try for the Governor mega turn. Trashing a curse or two into Crossroads (most likely with Farmland not Governor) looks like it could work rather well here too as Crossroads could help amass the number of Governors needed for a huge turn. Opening 4/3: Potion/Silver. Opening 5/2: Governor/Crossroads

Based on these cards, I would be really confident in winning on this board, especially since so many people so badly misplay Highway (which is useless here without the deck clogging Nomad Camp or the slowing Ironworks).

Worst board:
$5 Cartographer, Margrave, Hunting Party, Inn, Wharf
$4 Bridge
$3P Philosopher's Stone
$2P Scrying Pool
$2 Courtyard, Lighthouse

Except for Scrying Pool, this looks like a fun board (I hate Scrying Pool and instantly veto it in all games when playing with veto mode). Alas, this looks like a good pool deck board though Hunting Party and Cartographer looks tantalizing to avoid it. Using some of those extra buys from Wharf and Margrave on some Lighthouses looks necessary as both Margrave and Scrying Pool on their own are powerful but together they could be insane. Opening 4/3: Potion/Silver. Opening 5/2 Margrave/Lighthouse (or maybe Margrave/Courtyard?)
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Davio on December 18, 2011, 03:39:04 pm
Best
$5 Horn of Plenty, Embassy, Ill-Gotten Gains, Cartographer, Stables
$4 Noble Brigand, Moneylender
$3 Oracle
$2 Chapel, Crossroads

I think it's pretty funny that Oracle is on there, because I rarely buy it. Same goes for Noble Brigand. I'm a big Embassy and IGG fan. Especially IGG has served me quite well and it proved quite resilient.

There are some choices here. 5/2 is definitely IGG/Chapel for me. I'd probably bring in a Moneylender later to deal with those Coppers. 4/3 is most likely Moneylender/Chapel and hammering the IGGs as well.


Worst - not counting rinkworks' fan card Archivist
$5 Tactician, Governor
$4 Envoy, Throne Room
$3 Swindler
$2 Duchess, Fool's Gold
$3P Philosopher's Stone
$2P Apothecary
$0P Transmute

Some swingy cards here, still working out the best strategy with Governor. Also a surprising bunch of Alchemy cards.
I'd probably go Tactician with Apo assist and a Transmute here. With Tact-turns I can doubly buy and likely get an Apo with a Gold or something. Don't know whether it beats the obvious and boring Envoy.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Jack Rudd on December 18, 2011, 03:58:20 pm
My best 10:

Goons
Workshop
Remodel
Peddler
Saboteur
Spy
Trade Route
Bazaar
Contraband
Monument

That looks like a fun deck. Workshop and Saboteur are probably in there because I don't buy them unless I think they'll be really effective.

Worst 10:

Develop
Margrave
Jack of All Trades
Oracle
Mandarin
Nomad Camp
Embassy
Trader
Tunnel
Duchess

I, uh, think I need to play Hinterlands more.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: chwhite on December 18, 2011, 06:29:10 pm
It occurs to me that a lot of the cards on my Worst list are really most relevant in games where you want Duchy: B-crat and Explorer facilitate Duchy rushes, Duchess pretends to do so, Crossroads and Cartographer like greening early as well.  In other words, this is a board where Duchies probably matter.  Now, if you want to see something hilarious, take a look at my Effect With and Effect Without for Duchy (-3.81 Effect With, 5.05 Effect Without, both the most extreme effects I have for any card).  Actually, my top five cards in "Effect Without" are all kinda hilarious.  Who needs green cards anyway, indeed.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Kore on December 18, 2011, 07:04:27 pm
My "best board"

$2 + P: Scrying Pool
$3: Menagerie, Oasis
$4: Spice Merchant, Remake,
$5: Ill-Gotten Gains, Margrave, Cache, Embassy, Haggler

What an odd combination of cards for me. I'm horrible at scying pool engines, Cache is something I would never buy and Margrave is one of the weaker $5 attacks. On the other hand, Remake and IGG are two of my favorite cards and the combination of those on this board makes my decision easy. This is an IGG board so I'd open Remake/Silver and then buy nothing but IGG which would be remade into golds. After the IGG are gone, it's time to grab a embassy put those golds to good use.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: olneyce on December 19, 2011, 01:36:08 am
A couple meta-comments here:

Hinterlands is obviously a big effect here.  For some (like me), it's due to improvement over time.  So Hinterlands cards only reflect a higher quality of play and thus look better.  For others, it's about less familiarity making them look worse.  There is also probably a small sample size effect.  Less games with Hinterlands cards gives them less time to regress to the mean, so they show up at both extremes.

People have expressed some surprise at the mediocre cards that show up on the 'best' lists.  Of course, the good cards are good for everyone.  This isn't about what cards are good; it's about what cards you play better than the average person. 

That said, quality of cards could still matter.  The very best cards are probably harder to outplay others with.  Any goober can play Witch reasonably well.  Similarly, really bad cards are probably far easier for bad players to ignore.

I'm assuming that many of the people posting here are pretty good, better than average.  So you might expect them to have 'best' cards which require more skill to play well.  That is: good cards, but not the very best. 

I'd actually be really curious to see a study that compares the best/worst lists for the top players vs. level 30s, level 20s, level 10s, etc.  I wonder if there would be noticeable trends. 
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Anon79 on December 19, 2011, 01:49:53 am
Level 30-ish here. I have no idea how to play my best board. At all. Will probably be trounced on it by anyone at a similar level.

$6: Border Village, Farmland
$5: Governor
$4: Bridge, Feast, Island, Nomad Camp, Spice Merchant
$3: Steward
$2: Haven
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Thisisnotasmile on December 19, 2011, 05:32:15 am
Level 30-ish here. I have no idea how to play my best board. At all. Will probably be trounced on it by anyone at a similar level.

$6: Border Village, Farmland
$5: Governor
$4: Bridge, Feast, Island, Nomad Camp, Spice Merchant
$3: Steward
$2: Haven

Border Village -> Governor. Use Governor to Remodel the BVs into Provinces? It's the same as the standard Governor strategy but it skips out gaining Golds, and so it must be quicker.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: brokoli on December 19, 2011, 10:29:16 am
Best :

2$ - Embargo, Secret chamber
3$ - Woodcutter
3P$ - Apothecary
4$ - Ironworks, Quarry, Island
5$ - Counting house, Stash, Hunting party

… Funny, and interesting board. I don't love all of these cards. I hate Stash. Apothecary is annoying.
In this board, My favorite card is Island. I like also Hunting Party. Couting house is fun but too situationnal.
Embargo is depending very much of the opponent's strategy.
I think I will go for a simple Island rush.
After that, I will take quarry and woodcutter/Ironworks, this combo can help me to take a lot of HP.

Worst board :

2$ - Duchess
3$ - Oasis, Loan, Ambassador, Chancellor
4$ - Mining village, Bridge,
5$ - Cache, Upgrade, Cartographer

Here, I think I will open Mining village / Loan, taking some oasis instead of silver (so I can trash my coppers easily, with loan). And I will take 2-3 cartographers, an Upgrade and BM.
Bridge and Ambassador are pretty useless.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Thisisnotasmile on December 19, 2011, 10:32:00 am
After that, I will take quarry and woodcutter/Ironworks, this combo can help me to take a lot of HP.

You should take a look at the boneheaded plays topic!

Edit: Also the nombos topic http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1120.msg19803#msg19803
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: theory on December 19, 2011, 10:38:18 am
I did this experiment a little differently: I took only cards that I had >100 games with (this excludes Tournament, for one), and included a column of my %+, which is how often I buy or gain the card.

The result for best:
Code: [Select]
2   Chapel   92.10%
2   Haven   80.40%
3   Ambassador   92.50%
3   Warehouse   85.70%
3   Great Hall   90.60%
4   Feast   41.70%
4   Pirate Ship   36.20%
4   Sea Hag   83.90%
7   Expand   65.30%
7   Forge   50%
Several cards appear on this list because sometimes bad players don't buy them, I guess?  Chapel, Sea Hag.  It's possible I play those cards better, but somehow I doubt there's really that much skill involved in those cards.  Some appear because bad players buy them too much/inappropriately?  Feast/Pirate Ship.  Several cards appear on this list because they reduce bad luck (Haven, Warehouse).  Great Hall is an application of Beyond Silver.  Expand/Forge are just not that good, and maybe most people don't realize that?

And Ambassador ... I think I've fallen behind several of the 40+'ers in many other aspects of Dominion (since the great game purge, I'm not even 40+ on the leaderboard anymore!), but Ambassador games are one of the few areas left where I'm still confident I can beat just about anyone in the world.

The result for worst:
Code: [Select]
2   Moat   27.40%
3   Lookout   50.40%
4   Worker's Village   65.80%
4   Thief   9.40%
4   Salvager   76.70%
4   Spy   45.20%
4   Conspirator   49%
4   Ironworks   25.70%
5   Explorer   15.80%
8   Peddler   68.10%

Also known as "theory is bad with $4's".  Unsurprisingly, mostly, since I'm pretty bad at dealing with these cards.  (Conspirator in particular is a card I have never mastered, and I ignore Peddler and Salvager way too often.)  I think Thief/Explorer represent my last-ditch efforts to come back, and they cause me to ignore how I really should be mounting a comeback.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Anon79 on December 19, 2011, 11:52:16 am
The result for worst:
Code: [Select]
2   Moat   27.40%
3   Lookout   50.40%
4   Worker's Village   65.80%
4   Thief   9.40%
4   Salvager   76.70%
4   Spy   45.20%
4   Conspirator   49%
4   Ironworks   25.70%
5   Explorer   15.80%
8   Peddler   68.10%
It's uncanny how synergistic this board is? Lookout/Spy/Worker's Village to spam actions, Peddler/Conspirator to take advantage of spammed actions, Ironworks to gain all of them save Peddler, and Salvager to turn the Peddlers into Provinces and the +buy. On the other hand, Thief and Explorer are completely useless here, and Moat - well I suppose if you open 5/2.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Anon79 on December 19, 2011, 11:55:47 am
Level 30-ish here. I have no idea how to play my best board. At all. Will probably be trounced on it by anyone at a similar level.

$6: Border Village, Farmland
$5: Governor
$4: Bridge, Feast, Island, Nomad Camp, Spice Merchant
$3: Steward
$2: Haven

Border Village -> Governor. Use Governor to Remodel the BVs into Provinces? It's the same as the standard Governor strategy but it skips out gaining Golds, and so it must be quicker.
Okay, but what's the 4/3 and 3/4 opener here? Spice Merchant/Silver? Spice Merchant/Steward? Island/Silver? Feast/Silver? Feast/Haven? or some Nomad Camp shenanigans?
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Davio on December 19, 2011, 12:13:31 pm
Steward/Silver for me.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Thisisnotasmile on December 19, 2011, 12:23:14 pm
With 4/3 I'd probably open Nomad Camp hoping for a turn 2 Governor and if I don't get the $5 I'll take a Silver. Later on Governor the Nomad Camp into a Border Village -> Governor. If I open 3/4 I'd probably just take Silver/Spice Merchant using the Merchant to trash a few Coppers before it meets the same fate as the Nomads from the other plan.

Steward is probably a good option too to do a bit of trashing but I would skip it for the $4 terminals because a) they can be turned into BV/Governor later when they outlive their welcome while Steward can only becaome a Governor and b) heavy trashing is boring so I avod it whenever possible.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Elyv on December 19, 2011, 12:36:42 pm
I'm wondering if that board has a border village/Governor/Bridge deck with steward(and maybe spice merchant) for trashing, or if messing around with all that is just worse than remodeling BVs.

Because I have to admit, I would probably try for that. I don't really like remodel engines, and I do like Bridge decks.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: rrenaud on December 19, 2011, 12:54:15 pm
A governor/gold remodel deck has the nice property that spamming you with silvers disrupts your chance at hitting the combo.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: toaster on December 19, 2011, 04:15:16 pm
Interesting topic idea, here's my best board:

$6 Fairgrounds
$5 Horn of Plenty, Rabble, Stash
$4 Baron, Bureaucrat, Scout, Young Witch
$3 Black Market, Oracle
$2 Hamlet (Bane)

Since my top ten includes Young Witch, I took my next highest 2 or 3 cost card as the Bane (Hamlet, as it turns out).  The set seems to show my tendency toward big money-style games, but there's an interesting catch: my top two cards (Oracle and Horn of Plenty) are apparently in as trap cards...I play well in games where they are present by ignoring them.  Bureaucrat also falls in this category (a card which I buy in only 2% of games).  In fact, I only play 3 of these cards in 40% or more of games (Young Witch, Rabble, and Black Market), while 3 of them I play in fewer than 10% of games (Bureaucrat, Scout, and Horn of Plenty).  As for how this plays out...I probably go Young Witch/big money here.  Black Market is a little tempting, but it conflicts with Young Witch, which is the higher priority.

Worst board:

$6 Border Village
$5 Cache, Embassy, Governor, Haggler, Ill-Gotten Games
$4 Silk Road, Trader
$3 Oasis
$2 Fool's Gold

Given that these are all recently released cards, I think this set can be entirely disregarded.  I think I know the cause...sometime within the last couple of months I switch from matching with any registered player to primarily using the +- 15 levels option...which in turn has caused my raw W/L rate to dip.  Nothing terribly interesting there.  If I exclude Hinterlands and Governor, I get the following set:

$8 Peddler
$7 King's Court
$5 Contraband, Tribute
$4P Golem
$3P Philosopher's Stone
$4 Conspirator, Militia
$3 Ambassador
$P Transmute

Okay, that's more like it.  If my best set showed that I do well with big money-ish strategies and avoiding trap cards, this set sows that I still have a lot of work to do on my big engine play.  I don't have as much insightful commentary here (if I did, maybe these cards wouldn't be so bad for me :P).  I've been working on my Ambassador play, but I'm still not very good in those games.  Apparently I buy Militia far more often then I should, while Transmute and Philosopher's Stone are two card I'm not giving enough credit to (or, maybe not...I still play better without them than with them).

As to how I'd play it, I think Ambassadoring down to a Conspirator/King's Court Engine is the best bet here...but whether I could pull it off is an entirely different matter.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: ehunt on December 19, 2011, 05:15:55 pm
This is really fun!

My "best board" (skipping archivist).  I am actually terrible at this board. I'd go wharf/fool's gold if I split 5-2, buying three to four wharves and as many fool's golds as possible, and I'd go singlejack + 2 wharves with a 4-3 split; this is probably completely wrong.

$6 Farmland
$5 Embassy, Highway, Margrave, Wharf
$4 Jack of all Trades, Trader
$2 Duchess, Fool's Gold
P Vineyard



My worst board. Um, I would buy mountebank and hope to play it as much as possible. My opponent would hit me when I didn't have curses in hand, and then I would lose. At some point I'd buy a treasury; that will be a mistake, although my opponent's treasury will be very useful.

$6 Adventurer
$5 Stash, Council Room, Treasury, Mountebank
$4 Smithy
$3 Develop, Smugglers
$2 Courtyard, Secret Chamber


Adventurer and Council Room are cards I buy too much. My "effect with" adventurer is very high! It's just that I still shouldn't be buying it. That's a hard lesson to learn. We should all check this site more often!
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Axxle on December 19, 2011, 05:25:42 pm
Seems like fun!  I wanted to make a thread about what your best and worst cards according to council room are, but this seems like a much better way of doing it!

$6 Fairgrounds
$5 Ill-Gotten Gains
$4 Walled Village, Horse Traders
$3P Philosopher's Stone
$3 Scheme, Oasis
$2 Fool's Gold
$P Vineyard, Transmute

Not so surprised to see some of these things on here, I tend to do very well with super janky junk filled decks like the ones that happen with IGG and Vineyard.  There seem to be so many conflicting options here it's hard to figure out what's best.  I'd be tempted to do something with Horse Traders and Vineyard, since I'd probably have plenty of turns where I can buy a scheme/oasis and a vineyard but IGG is probably too fast for this deck to get going and oasis/HT is a nombo.  I'd probably end up just rushing the IGG and getting a bunch of other cards along the way when I can for Fairgrounds.

Worst board:

$5 Harvest, Highway, Cartographer
$4 Young Witch, Coppersmith, Island, Spice Merchant, Bureaucrat
$3 Chancellor (bane)
$2 Hamlet, Duchess

Hmm... yeah... Not liking this one.  Lets see... the only +Action is hamlet, also the only source of +buy.  No trashing whatsoever, but cartographer and island could help that.  I really don't know what I'd do here.  I'd probably open Young Witch/Silver, picking up Hamlets on 2, Cartographers on 5 and one harvest, but mostly play BMU. I would probably open Spice Merchant/Chancellor to get some trashing done and have some cover against the young witch.  I would buy a young witch and two hamlets later and go big money with cartographers at 5.  I'm tempted with the highway engine but I'd rather not take the chance.

edit: Apparently I failed pre-K math.  8 != 10
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Axxle on December 19, 2011, 05:31:56 pm
Adventurer and Council Room are cards I buy too much. My "effect with" adventurer is very high! It's just that I still shouldn't be buying it. That's a hard lesson to learn. We should all check this site more often!

I thought that a high "Effect with" means that when you buy it you win more often than normal and a low "Effect without" means that you shouldn't have ignored it.

Quote from: CouncilRoom
"Win Rate with" is the number of Win Points per game you get when you buy or gain at least one of this card.
"Win Rate without" is the number of Win Points per game you get when you never buy or gain the card.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: mith on December 19, 2011, 05:39:55 pm
Given Availability:

$5 - Ill-Gotten Gains (92.9), Governor (94.1), Haggler (25.0), Stables (70.8), Margave (54.5), Mandarin (17.5)
$4 - Conspirator (61.8)
$3 - Scheme (42.5)
$2 - Crossroads (77.3), Fool's Gold (22.6)

IGG-rush... Might consider picking up a Margrave or two, depending on how the game was going, but probably just a boring Duchy-rush. I love Governor, but not against IGG.

Minimum 100 Games:

$7 - King's Court (91.7), Forge (55.5)
$5 - Royal Seal (32.9), City (80.9), Outpost (38.3)
$4 - Conspirator (61.8), Moneylender (56.7)
$3 - Black Market (61.2), Smugglers (23.0), Fortune Teller (13.5)

Depends on what's in the Black Market, I guess; KC/City/Conspirator/Outpost seems like a good plan with some +Buy (though relying on powered-up Cities for that may be dangerous).

Effect With:

$5 - Ill-Gotten Gains (2.9), Governor (94.1), Outpost (38.3), Stables (70.8)
$4 - Spice Merchant (62.3), Trader (26.0), Walled Village (53.1), Coppersmith (17.8)
$3 - Fortune Teller (13.5)
$2P - Scrying Pool (51.7)

Trader is a good defense against IGG-rush... but I'd probably still go there. Trader/Silver opening might be safest, though Spice Merchant/Fortune Teller is intriguing. Stables or Governor after the IGGs run out if the Curses aren't low enough to rush the Duchies. Coppersmith works nicely with IGG as well.

Worst Given Availability:

$6 - Goons (75.2)
$5 - Upgrade (69.5), Ghost Ship (56.2), Rabble (42.7), Treasury (56.0)
$4P - Golem (44.9)
$4 - Bureaucrat (5.6), Militia (57.9), Gardens (60.7), Baron (55.6)

Ugh. Upgrade to get rid of my Estates, I guess. Some combination of Ghost Ship/Goons/Rabble, after that. (Golem/Bureaucrat/Rabble might be amusing, if not for Upgrade?)
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Elyv on December 19, 2011, 05:46:42 pm
Adventurer and Council Room are cards I buy too much. My "effect with" adventurer is very high! It's just that I still shouldn't be buying it. That's a hard lesson to learn. We should all check this site more often!

I thought that a high "Effect with" means that when you buy it you win more often than normal and a low "Effect without" means that you shouldn't have ignored it.

Quote from: CouncilRoom
"Win Rate with" is the number of Win Points per game you get when you buy or gain at least one of this card.
"Win Rate without" is the number of Win Points per game you get when you never buy or gain the card.
You're getting "effect with" and "win rate with" mixed up.

Imagine there was some hypothetical card that was completely horrible, and isotropic as a whole had a 0.1 win rate with it. Now imagine you are a player who has an overall winrate of 1.30, and you have a win rate with this card of 0.3. Your win rate with it is horrible(0.3), but your effect with is actually very high since you do so much better than the average player who buys it when you do buy it.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Anon79 on December 19, 2011, 08:26:17 pm
Worst board:

$5 Harvest, Highway, Cartographer
$4 Young Witch, Coppersmith, Island
$3 Chancellor (bane)
$2 Hamlet, Duchess
You're missing a couple of cards there.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: toaster on December 19, 2011, 09:01:00 pm
It'd be even more interesting if I could filter this to be based only on games against level 25 or 30+ players.  A lot of my "top" cards are simply traps I don't fall into, and I'm guessing most of that effect would disappear if restricting to game against other good players (who presumably avoid the same traps)
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Axxle on December 19, 2011, 09:45:09 pm
Worst board:

$5 Harvest, Highway, Cartographer
$4 Young Witch, Coppersmith, Island
$3 Chancellor (bane)
$2 Hamlet, Duchess
You're missing a couple of cards there.
Whoops! :-[
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Jorbles on December 20, 2011, 01:25:17 am
My Best Board is:
$6 Farmland
$5 Hunting Party, Vault, Highway, Haggler, Governor
$4 Walled Village, Noble Brigand
$3 Menagerie
$2 Fool's Gold

With no +Buy I'd say Fool's Gold is a trap, unless you open 5/2 in which case you could open Governor/Fool's Gold and then trash your Coppers into FGs. The rest of the cards aren't that exciting, I'd probably just get a Vault or two and then Vault it up. Maybe buying a Farmland's late game to remodel a Gold into a Province. One thing I noticed about this board is that almost all of these cards are new as of the Cornucopia expansion which I think is when I started actively improving a lot. Vault being the one exception. I do play that card well, and always have.

My worst board is:
$5 Cache, Ghost Ship, Mint, Torturer, Explorer
$4 Bishop
$3 Ambassador, Smugglers, Loan
$2 Duchess

With no Villages present on this board I would probably open this double Ambassador hoping to win the Ambassador war, maybe buying a Mint if a good trashing opportunity came up. This set of cards is interesting as it contains cards I used to overrate and play when I shouldn't (Bishop, Torturer, Smugglers) and also contains a lot of cards I just don't know much about when to use (most of the others), Ambassador is interesting that it's on here as it's long been a card I'm weak with however I think the fact that it's still on here comes from the fact that I spent basically the first 6 months I played online trying to find a way to (usually unsuccessfully) work around the card. I'm more accepting of the card now.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: permanoob on December 20, 2011, 04:30:08 am
Best Board
1. Archivist. No surprise there. I only played 7 games with it before it went down so it's got high variance but honestly? Archivist is just awesome. Check this out: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/31/game-20111031-192747-9868d312.html
2. Haggler. I rarely go for this card so I don't know. I guess other people are misled by it and lose?
3. University. I totally get this one. I rarely go for it and other people always do on boards where it is bad. They lose. Badabing badaboom. Although oddly enough if it was on this board I might consider it to set up an Archivist chain depending on support.
4. Farmland. I feel like my knack for choosing when to buy Farmland is pretty good. Sometimes it helps in the late game of nochapel curse games when I can trash curses and gain estates for a lil vp swing.
5. Spice Merchant. I just played a fun game with Spice Merchant. I opened spice merchant/chancellor, bought some peddlers, then went for the gold. I wouldn't have won if my opponent had gone for a better strategy but it was still fun to play.
6. Moat. I have no idea why this is here. Why am I even typing this? Nobody cares about my stats.
7. Remake. What a great card! Sometimes my opponents ignore this when they shouldn't.
8. Talisman. Not sure why this is here. It's plus/minus .35 so let's attribute it to that.
9. Steward. I feel like I am good at selecting good steward boards and when to trash with Steward.
10. Tribute. I usually ignore Tribute.

I guess on this board I would open Silver/Steward and maybe employ a few Farmland buys in the late game. Boring board and Archivist has no support unfortunatley.

 ______________
//RIP ARCHIVIST\\
||                       ||
||         M            ||
||       MMM         ||
||         M            ||
||         M            ||
||                       ||
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Dubdubdubdub on December 20, 2011, 04:54:05 am
Best:

$6
Hoard

$5
Saboteur
Minion
Mountebank
Governor

$4
Caravan
Spice Merchant
Worker’s Village

$2
Secret Chamber
Herbalist

No real surprises here, though I would have expected Menagerie or GM. I feel like I play those pretty well.

4/3: Secret Chamber/Spice Merchant, for a smooth start, defending against Mountebank-onslaught. As soon as possible, I'd buy some Governors, as any Governor/SC hand is likely to give me a province (except after a Minion-attack. Hmm. I would probably ignore that realization). With a $4-hand, I'd buy silvers, to make sure a Gov/SC hand makes for a province.

5/2: Governor/SC, and buy Provinces almost right away. With $5-$7, always buy a Governor. Bluntly ignore the other $5, each of which may disrupt my strategy (Mountebank least of all, I guess). Again, buy silvers to fuel this engine.

This Gov/SC strategy is new to me, and I'm not sure it would win. Usually I play Gov a bit more 'traditionally', building up to a gold-trashing superturn.


Worst:

$6
Harem

$5
Duke
Margrave
Contraband
Merchant Ship
Harvest

$4
Navigator
Gardens
Baron

$2
Lighthouse

This makes sense. I got wrecked on Baron a couple of times, I need to practice and understand that card better (so, thanks for the article, Theory!). I love Gardens and Duke, but go for them too often. I half expected Silk Road and Vineyards here as well.
Here's what I'd do:

5/2: Margrave/Lighthouse. Pure BM after that, choosing a couple of Golds before my first Harem. The extra coin help a lot, given the +buy from Margrave. I might screw this up trying for a Gardens or Duke strategy, because I like them so much.
4/3: Pure Barom/BM. Opening Baron/Silver. Again: the alternate greens might be a trap. Then again, I might just pull it off. Live and learn. At least I have the +buy, so it does make sense.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Michaelf7777777 on December 20, 2011, 05:55:31 am
Best Board:

$5 - Mine
$4 - Cutpurse, Treasure Map, Remodel, Young Witch, Baron
$3 - Shanty Town, Steward, Smugglers, Village (Bane)
$2 - Duchess

With 4/3 would open Treasure Map/ Steward
With 5/2 would open Mine/ Duchess

Worst Board

$6 - Grand Market
$5 - Stash, Outpost, Counting House
$4P - Golem
$4 - Bridge, Monument
$3P - Familiar
$3 - Fishing Village

4/3 Opening: Potion/ Silver
5/2 Opening: Potion/ Nothing cursing my bad luck
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: mnavratil on December 20, 2011, 10:56:30 am
Fun excercise!
Best (ignoring Archivist):
$6 - Harem
$5 - Ill-Gotten Gains, Embassy
$4 - Bridge
$3 - Great Hall, Shanty Town, Ambassador, Oracle
$2 - Native Village
$0P - Transmute

Couple of options here. Bridge/Native Village is present, but might be hard to pull off in the face of the ambassadors and IGGs.
Straight IGG rush probably won't work great against ambassador, but I think I would go for ambassador/IGG. 5/2 open IGG/nothing, picking up an ambassador ASAP. 4/3 open ambassador/silver.
Depending on where my deck ends up, probably transition into a VP rush or BM.

Worst:
$5 - Margrave, Inn, Upgrade, Jester
$4 - Spice Merchant, Treasure Map, Jack of All Trades, Scout
$3 - Tunnel, Warehouse

I'd probably go Double-Jack. Warehouse/Tunnel is intriguing, but that combo is probably on the worst list because I overbuy it.
I would probably lose to somebody that throws together a miraculous Jack, spice merchant, margrave, Inn combo.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Marcus316 on December 20, 2011, 12:09:41 pm
Level 12 here ... and only 528 games of mine on Councilroom, so small sample, I  guess.

Best (with my % Gained):
$2 - Fool's Gold 90.6%
$3 - Wishing Well 34.4%
$3 - Chancellor 14.9%
$3P - Philosopher's Stone 16.2%
$4 - Baron 62.2%
$4 - Navigator 15.6%
$4P - Golem 44.8%
$5 - Contraband  20.7%
$5 - Counting House 27.8%
$6 - Farmland 44.8%

I find this ... interesting. A lot of these cards are up near the top of my list because I ignore them when players around my level are trying to make them work. Golem, in particular, seems to entice players at my level, and I seem to be good (again, for my level) at evaluating when it's too slow for the board.

Fool's Gold is sickening, and Baron gives the +buy to get more early. I'd probably open Fool's Gold/Baron ... though a couple other cards might help speed things up, too, like Wishing Well and maybe Navigator. Doesn't seem like too complicated a board, to me ...

Worst:
$2 - Courtyard 42.9%
$3 - Workshop 11.6%
$3 - Fortune Teller 12.5%
$4 - Young Witch 44.4%
$4 - Tournament 85.7%
$4 - Militia 81.5%
$5 - Torturer 50.0%
$6 - Grand Market 85.7%
$7 - Bank 86.5%
$7 - Expand 63.6%

Interesting note here about places 11, 12, and 13 on my list ... Goons, Minion, City. Looks like I have trouble with both engines and with attacks in general. Also, I suck at Tournament games. I don't know how to play this board, except possibly to try and get to the GMs first, likely opening Militia/Silver. What would stronger players do here?
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Elyv on December 20, 2011, 12:14:10 pm
Marcus, what's the Bane on your Worst board?
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Thisisnotasmile on December 20, 2011, 12:17:51 pm
Marcus, what's the Bane on your Worst board?

Great Hall.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: hightek on December 20, 2011, 12:33:24 pm
This was an interesting enough topic to end my lurking. 

Best:
$6
Farmland, Border Village, Fairgrounds, Harem
$5
Minion
$4
Young Witch, Spice Merchant, Ironworks
$3
Menagerie, Tunnel
Bane card:
$3 Swindler

I seem to be good at the "Gold or _____" dilemma, judging by the number of $6 cards on this list.

Ironically, perhaps, I do not know what the dominant strategy on this board will be.  I think I would go for a Fairgrounds rush with Young Witch / Menagerie / Tunnel as the primary driver to get there, but if they loaded up on Swindlers, I could see major problems. As a counter, Ironworks -> Swindler / Tunnel seems alright, as long as you don't get the tunnels too early with nothing to trigger them.

Openings: Spice Merchant / Silver, Minion / -.

$0P
Transmute
$2
Courtyard
$2P
Apothecary, University
$3P
Familiar
$4
Scout, Horse Traders, Trader
$5
Market, Venture, Outpost

Oh god, this is even worse.  I seem to have no idea how to play alchemy, in general.

Familiars are going to be huge here, with no trashing and strong potion options.  Horse traders seems like the best $4 -- There's going to be no way to avoid the onslaught of curses.  I bet someone could use apothecary well here too, maybe? That card's use seems to escape me.

Openings: Potion  / Silver; Potion / Courtyard
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: rspeer on December 20, 2011, 12:39:29 pm
It's funny, I didn't even know Archivist was dead. I just figured I didn't know how to turn it on in the interface anymore, and I almost always auto-match so I wasn't going to try to force it to be in a game.

Like many people, my "worst" results came with lots of outliers, particularly from Hinterlands. So if I require at least 50 games here's the new results I get:

$5  Laboratory
$4  Bridge, Conspirator, Caravan, (Potion)
$3P  Philosopher's Stone
$3  Loan, Great Hall
$2P  Apothecary
$2  Chapel, Pearl Diver

The funny thing is that while I may be sub-par at working Chapel or Laboratory into my strategy, I'm pretty sure I know what to do with them together. And so does my opponent.

The plan is start with a Chapel and a Caravan (or a Chapel/Lab for the win with 5/2), get a couple of Silvers, then spend $2 on Pearl Diver, $3 on Great Hall, $4 on another Caravan if it's still early or Conspirator otherwise, and $5 on Laboratory. Probably skip golds because my money should come from Conspirators.

And the Potion-costing cards on this board are astoundingly unsuitable given the rest of the cards.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Marcus316 on December 20, 2011, 01:10:21 pm
Marcus, what's the Bane on your Worst board?

Great Hall.

Good point, I missed that. Thanks, TINAS.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: yuma on December 20, 2011, 02:01:52 pm
Here is my best:
8$: Peddler
6$ Farmland
5$: Haggler, Explorer, Royal Seal, Mandarin
4$: Silk Road, Walled Village, Envoy
2$: Duchess

Archivist is actually in my top 10, number 2 in fact, but I have only played 4 games with it so I didn't include it.

I think what this shows is that I know to avoid these cards and not buy them. Because I don't like any of these with the exception of Silk Roads under appropriate circumstances and Haggler when there are no +Buys.

If I played this board the only card I would mostly likely only go for Envoy and go Envoy, Big Money.

My worst board:

6$: Boarder Village
5$: Venture, Rabble
4$: Trader, Bridge, Treasure Map
3P$: Philosopher's Stone, Alchemist
3$: Swindler
2$: Fool's Gold

A couple of cards on here surprised me, mostly Boarder Village, Swindler and Bridge. I feel like I know how to play these cards pretty well. I am thinking I buy Boarder Village too much over Gold and that hurts me. Swindler I don't know what my problem is and Bridge--perhaps I have bought too many without enough actions so they terminally clashed. The others... I rarely buy Rabble and I will almost always veto Alchemist or Philosopher's Stone because I am horrible at playing them. I am not sure how I would play this board, my first instinct is to go for potions and do philospher's stone, alchemist. Another option would be Treasure Map, but again I wouldn't feel too safe with that.  Any thoughts?
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: mnavratil on December 21, 2011, 09:50:28 am
Border Village/Rabble looks quite strong there, even with venture present. I would probably go border Vilalge/Rabble engine by starting Swindler/Silver and working up to $6.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: toaster on December 21, 2011, 03:05:53 pm
Worst:
$2 - Courtyard 42.9%
$3 - Workshop 11.6%
$3 - Fortune Teller 12.5%
$4 - Young Witch 44.4%
$4 - Tournament 85.7%
$4 - Militia 81.5%
$5 - Torturer 50.0%
$6 - Grand Market 85.7%
$7 - Bank 86.5%
$7 - Expand 63.6%

Interesting note here about places 11, 12, and 13 on my list ... Goons, Minion, City. Looks like I have trouble with both engines and with attacks in general. Also, I suck at Tournament games. I don't know how to play this board, except possibly to try and get to the GMs first, likely opening Militia/Silver. What would stronger players do here?

I'd probably open Young Witch/Silver, then pick up a second Young Witch along the way, throw in a couple of Tournaments, and build a Big Money-ish deck with followers and Trusty Steed thrown in.  Grand Market isn't great on this board, because there's no +card/+action or trashing to set up chains of them.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Anon79 on December 21, 2011, 08:56:20 pm
I'd probably open Young Witch/Silver, then pick up a second Young Witch along the way, throw in a couple of Tournaments, and build a Big Money-ish deck with followers and Trusty Steed thrown in.
Well sure, if you can just decide that you'll get two prizes, you'll probably win. Although I'm not sold as to the effectiveness of Followers here...
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Captain_Frisk on December 21, 2011, 09:17:33 pm
All right: My worst:
Trader
Oasis
Highway
Inn
Scheme
Ill Gotten Gains
Crossroads
Noble Brigand
Haggler
Smithy

I'd totally want to do some Haggler + Highway here, but given that I suck so bad at all these cards, perhaps Smithy Big Money is the way to go, possibly shifting to push IGG if the opponent goes that way.

The best:
Oracle (?!?!?!?!)
Hunting Party
Silk Road
Horse Traders
Farmland
Harvest
Quarry
Village
Smugglers
Walled Village

I wish this was a more interesting board.  Open horse traders + silver -> hunting party, getting 1 gold, then nothing but hunting parties, provinces, and silvers!  Duchies later than usual, double buy hunting parties if possible @ 10.  I suspect that the good win rate with oracle is based on ignoring it while my opponents play with the new shiny.

I'm shocked that my % buy of hunting parties is ONLY 94%... what was I thinking the other 6%?
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: biopower on December 22, 2011, 12:43:34 am
All right: My worst:
Trader
Oasis
Highway
Inn
Scheme
Ill Gotten Gains
Crossroads
Noble Brigand
Haggler
Smithy

I'd totally want to do some Haggler + Highway here, but given that I suck so bad at all these cards, perhaps Smithy Big Money is the way to go, possibly shifting to push IGG if the opponent goes that way.

I feel like going Traders + IGG would be strong on this board, as Traders can help block some of the cursing the opponents do, and trashing an IGG for 5 Silvers feels fairly strong. Traders are also really good for Duchy rushing, although I'm sure you can pick up a couple Provinces with a deck full of Silver.

I don't know whether picking up a Haggler is good here though: I feel like Haggler + Highway is a Nombo because there are no buys, and you can't pick up anything extra if you buy from a $0 pile. Highway also doesn't let you pick up anything you couldn't already have picked up from Haggler. I'm also unsure about Smithy Big Money because of the presence of Noble Brigand.

Traders + IGG is also probably weak to Noble Brigand, but probably your deck is so full of silver that losing a couple won't hurt too much compared to the cursing attack.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Anon79 on December 22, 2011, 05:30:11 am
I don't know whether picking up a Haggler is good here though: I feel like Haggler + Highway is a Nombo because there are no buys, and you can't pick up anything extra if you buy from a $0 pile.
Don't play all your Highways? As long as the card you're buying is still $1 or $2...
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Captain_Frisk on December 22, 2011, 04:11:30 pm
I don't know whether picking up a Haggler is good here though: I feel like Haggler + Highway is a Nombo because there are no buys, and you can't pick up anything extra if you buy from a $0 pile.
Don't play all your Highways? As long as the card you're buying is still $1 or $2...

He's semi correct, in that if you play ALL of your highways, then your haggler doesn't work.  However, in reality you are dead on.... you aren't going to be playing 8 highways, and even if you play 6, then you can play haggler, buy Province -> Gain Gold. 

However, his point is more that without the +buys, highway isn't that awesome.  I wasn't looking at it as a great card, but rather a nice non-terminal that I could pick up for free with the haggler.  Haggler -> Buy Gold, Gain Highway...

Of course, these are my worst cards given avail... so clearly my analysis is weak on them.

I do like the trader / igg option above though... although you're probably never going to have more than 1 trader, so its protection against enemy IGG is less likely to be useful, especially once you bloat your deck with IGG coppers and silvers.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Tejayes on December 22, 2011, 05:54:22 pm
BEST

Ill-Gotten Gains (90.3%)
Mine (31.1%)
Upgrade (71.1%)
-
Conspirator (72.9%)
Noble Brigand (57.7%)
Spice Merchant (78.1%)
-
Alchemist (91.1%)
-
Develop (61.1%)
Shanty Town (76.1%)
-
Native Village (74.4%)

I'd most likely go for an IGG-rush, aided by Spice Merchant, Upgrade, and maybe even Develop and Conspirator. As much as I love Alchemist/Conspirator, I would think it would be too slow against IGG-rush, so I'd probably avoid the Potion entirely. No real big drawing cards here, so Native Village and Shanty Town would only help if I had Conspirators to activate. Mine and Noble Brigand seem pointless here.

WORST

Border Village (93.5%)
-
Embassy (58.1%)
Governor (80.8%)
Mandarin (43.8%)
-
Jack of All Trades (84.0%)
Silk Road (41.9%)
-
Workshop (14.4%)
-
Crossroads (90.9%)
Duchess (46.2%)
Fool's Gold (63.9%)

I suppose I could try a DoubleJack strategy here, though I haven't been all that successful with it yet. Knowing me, I'd get a Governor to help in... some way. Maybe trash a Copper for a Crossroads, or trash a Jack to get a Border Village and... a Jack. Yeah, I suck with these cards.

(Note: There are a lot of Hinterlands cards here, so this might change as I play more with those cards.)
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Thisisnotasmile on December 24, 2011, 06:20:37 am
Mine and Noble Brigand seem pointless here.

Mine IGG -> IGG or later into Gold is not a particularly bad move. If you only do it once you may as well have just bought another IGG, but more than once and it's a net profit.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: chwhite on December 25, 2011, 12:43:29 pm
Just for fun, I thought I'd see how this would work for isotropic as a whole.

Overall Winrate with(for isotropic as a whole):

Best(ignoring Prizes, colonies on the board):
$6 Grand Market
$5 Mountebank, Witch, Ill-Gotten Gains, Hunting Party, Venture(?!), Ghost Ship, Wharf
$3P Familar
$3 Masquerade

What a nice, friendly board. I think I'd open Silver/Masquerade, and grab a mountebank early. After that it gets a little trickier. I'm pretty sure you want a second masquerade at some point, but do you want Wharf? Do you want a second Mountebank/Witch? Do you take HP over Gold(I suspect no, but I'm not sure)? I'm really not sure.

I'd take HP over Gold on this board every day and twice on Sundays.  I mean, with my first $6 hand I'd need to get a single Gold, and Grand Markets would be nice if they're ever affordable, but Hunting Party spam with Mountebank as the linchpin terminal seems like the winning strategy here.  (Masq/Silver is still the opening of choice, though.)

Worst:
$5 Counting House, Saboteur
$4 Thief, Coppersmith, Bureaucrat, Pirate Ship, Talisman
$3 Workshop, Chancellor
$0P Transmute

Seems like a good Pirate Ship board; grab a couple quickly, and try to build up to provinces. Not really a whole lot else to say.

If this is a 2p game I'd almost certainly go Single (maybe double, but probably not) Bureaucrat Big Money.  I'd consider the Ships in multiplayer, though.

Overall Winrate without(for isotropic as a whole):

Best:
Note: silver is in second here


$5 Saboteur, Highway
$4 Pirate Ship, Throne Room, Bridge, Talisman, Walled Village
$3 Black Market, Smugglers
$2P University

This actually seems like an interesting board; all it needs is a little card draw or trashing to be really strong(and you might be able to find it in the black market). I think I would try to go for some sort of Highway/TR/Bridge based deck, maybe mixing in Talisman, smugglers, and/or Walled Village. Saboteur might even  be worth getting to trash their provinces, although I think this board will be too much about one big turn.

This is indeed an interesting board, but the lack of draw and trash really constrains the viability of combo options and consigns most of these cards to being traps. This is definitely the sort of board where opening Black Market is probably your best option, and rolling the die on good BM buys is going to be necessary.  If the Black Market draws are bad enough then I suspect a primarily Big Money strategy might be faster than any combo on here.

Worst:
Colonies are present
$7 King's Court
$6 Goons, Grand Market, Nobles
$5 Mountebank, Witch, Hunting Party, Wharf
$4 Tournament
$3P Familiar

Um, Mountebank into Goons-Based deck? seems like a pretty straightforward concept, although building it might be tricky. Probably the person who wins is the first one to King's court a mountebank/witch/wharf.

Mountebank probably dilutes everyone's deck enough that mega-Goons is going to be real hard to pull off... except for that great chaff-thresher known as Hunting Party, which I suspect is stronger than Wharf here (especially since King's Courting it gives you extra actions too).  But yeah, this is absolutely a race to King's Courting your power cards.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Tejayes on December 25, 2011, 04:34:50 pm
Mine and Noble Brigand seem pointless here.

Mine IGG -> IGG or later into Gold is not a particularly bad move. If you only do it once you may as well have just bought another IGG, but more than once and it's a net profit.

You have a point. Also, I could Mine a Silver into an IGG if I wanted. Still, with Upgrade on this board, I could always just Upgrade IGG's into Golds. I'd lose the ability to use the Gold right away, but whatever. The point is, I would rather have a tighter, smaller deck, and against Spice Merchant, Upgrade, and even Develop, Mine is just not as effective towards that goal.

---

Additionally, I'm going to now make and analyze boards based on my best and worst Win Rate With cards:

BEST

Cache
Horn of Plenty
Ill-Gotten Gains
-
Bureaucrat
Conspirator
Silk Road
Spice Merchant
-
Develop
Swindler
Woodcutter

Interestingly, Silk Road is on my WRW best list, but on my WRGA worst list. That should tell you just how badly I do when I avoid SR.

Anyway, my plan here for a 3/4 opening is to start Develop/Spice Merchant. If I get SM before Dev, I'll gladly SM away some Copper, but the initial plan is to Dev SM for an IGG and another Dev, then Dev the IGG into a Gold and an SM. Once IGG is gone, I'll Dev 4's into Silver and Cache, ensuring a minimum of $5 for my next hand in the hopes of a little Province action. Endgame will probably focus more on procuring Silk Roads, Duchies, and Estates, either bought traditionally or through the use of Develop.

If I open 5/2, I'll start IGG'ing right away, then work on getting some SM's and Dev's. A pure IGG-rush could be foiled by Swindler, so that's why I'd augment my IGG deck with SM and Dev.

WORST

Duke
Embassy
Haggler
Jester
Saboteur
Stables
Stash
-
Thief
-
Duchess
Fool's Gold

Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeergh. Is "resign" an option? I'd go for Big Money here, maybe grabbing a Jester and some Stables to tick off my opponent(s). In a larger game, Thief will be an option for sure. If I were to try a Duke deck, I'd take a Haggler so I can grab an extra Silver when I buy Duchy/Duke.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: TrojH on December 25, 2011, 11:47:29 pm
My best board*:

$5: Ill-Gotten Gains, Embassy, Trading Post
$4: Trader, Monument, Silk Road, Moneylender, Gardens
$2: Crossroads, Moat

Note: Jack of All Trades is one of my top 10 cards, but to avoid the easy DoubleJack strategy, I replaced it with my 11th best card (Gardens).

Hmm. Looks like it's time for a Gardens deck, with Trader and Ill-Gotten Gains as the support crew.



My worst board:

$6: Border Village
$5: Highway, Minion
$4: Spice Merchant, Walled Village, Feast
$3: Develop, Tunnel
$2: Duchess, Hamlet

Okay. This worries me. My worst board contains my two most popular purchases: Tunnel (100%) and Border Village (96%). Maybe I shouldn't buy them so often?

Anyway, this one seems to be obvious. Get $2, buy Hamlet. Get $3, buy Tunnel. Get $4, buy Feast, and turn it into a Minion later. Get $5, buy Minion. Get $6, buy Border Village, gain Minion.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Jorbles on December 29, 2011, 05:32:55 pm
We should get the finalist's in the tournament to play their boards based on this thread (or the other one (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1265.0), but I think this one has more variability). What better way to challenge the top players then to get them to play to their strengths, their opponent's strengths, their weaknesses and their opponent's weaknesses.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: A_S00 on January 04, 2012, 07:06:48 pm
Ooh, cool topic, didn't notice it until now.  Level 28 today:

Best
Code: [Select]
$7 - King's Court (63.5%)
$6 - Goons (69%)
$5 - Governor (81%), Upgrade (74%), Saboteur (69%)
$4 - Remodel (66%)
$3 - Steward (63.5%)
$2 - Embargo (64%), Pawn (63.5%), Hamlet (63.5%)

Colony/Platinum available.

Huh.  I guess I'd open Governor/Hamlet on 5/2 and gain a couple golds, then buy my way into some kind of Goons engine, using Upgrades for trashing, buying lots of Hamlets for +actions, and more Governors for +Cards, then eventually try to get some big KC/Goons turns going.  On 4/3, maybe open Remodel/Silver, Remodel Estates into more Silvers and Coppers into Hamlets, and buy a Goons as soon as possible, then transition into that same engine.  Not really a board I see a particularly obvious play on, though.

Interestingly, quite a few of these are cards where my Effect Without is much higher than my Effect With (Governor, currently my best card with 16 games, gives me a Win Rate Without of 2.00...apparently, every time I've decided not to buy Governor so far, I've won).  Colony and Platinum also have much higher Effect Without for me...I guess I'm good at figuring out when to rush Provinces on a Colony board?

As for what it says about me...I'm good with some engines and attacks, and also at not buying certain terrible cards?  Don't see much of any kind of pattern there.

Worst (ignoring Archivist, which I've never played)
Code: [Select]
$7 - Expand (44%)
$6 - Nobles (45.5%)
$5 - Counting House (42%), Mandarin (42.5%), Torturer (44.5%), Inn (46%)
$4p - Golem (42%)
$4 - Noble Brigand (39%), Sea Hag (44.5%)
$3 - Fortune Teller (42%)

Open Sea Hag/Silver or Torturer/nothing, transition into Inn/Torturer engine with some Silvers and Golds.  Buy Nobles instead of Golds late game (after the fourth Province gets bought, maybe?).  Not confident I'd win.

From my Council Room stats, looks like there are some cards (Counting House, Mandarin, Fortune Teller) that I just have no idea how to play, so I never buy them, resulting in terrible Effect Without (since on the rare occasions when I should buy them, I don't).  And then there's some cards I just suck with.

Cool beans.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Drab Emordnilap on January 09, 2013, 10:41:33 am
Hooray, Council Room is back and I can obsess over what cards I'm good at playing again!

My Best Board:

$6 - Harem (66.0%)
$5 - Tribute (17.9%)
$4 - Sea Hag (75.9%), Horse Traders (63.2%), Spy (20.6%), Talisman (14.8%)
$3 - Oracle (15.5%)
$2 - Duchess (49.1%)
$P - Transmute (6.6%), Vineyard (22.9%)

Hm, I feel like there must be something wrong with the numbers; it says the public acquires Talisman 41.2% of games? That's crazy. Anyways, this isn't the most exciting board. I would open Sea Hag/Silver, get a couple Horse Traderses, and then start hammering on the Duchies. I think 3-piling on three of Duchy/Duchess/Curse/Estate will happen before someone going for Provinces will make enough points to matter, and I can't imagine this is much of a board for Vineyard.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: RichardNixon on January 09, 2013, 12:17:18 pm
Worst Board
Cards I don't often use and perhaps this means I should? Embargo, Harvest
Cards I actively dislike: Familiar, IGG, Baron
Cards I am admittedly just bad at using: Inn, Golem, Inn, Stables, Inn, Vineyard, Herbalist, seriously what is Inn for?

Best Board
Cards I'm not counting because my strategy with them is "don't use": Noble Brigand, Saboteur, Oracle (#1, #2, #11)

$5 Wharf
$4 Conspirator, Bishop, Militia, Salvager
$3 Woodcutter, Worshop, Wishing Well, Tunnel
$2 Cellar

Came as quite a surprise to me as most of these I wouldn't consider "my specialty" in any regard, especially not conspirator, my new #1. Woodcutter and Salvager both give me a higher winrate without than with, so I guess I'm just above average in ignoring them when need be?

There's no village here so I think just straight Wharf-BM would be the best bet.

The "win rate with" and "effect" columns seem more interesting to me than availability overall. Apparently I don't always use Cache or Apothecary, but when I do, I play 20 stdevs above average. Small sample size I guess? Seems to be an issue for "Win rate with" also, so maybe that's the upside of availability.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Jerk of All trades on January 09, 2013, 12:39:25 pm
Hilarious, despite my 700+ games played, I have 0 buys of IGG.  I pretty much always play veto mode, and I veto it every time.

Best:
Ambassador
Woodcutter
Swindler
Mining Village
Torturer
King's Court
Nobles
Farmland
Witch
Jack of All Trades

So, this is an absolutely brutal set of cards, with some major potential for getting torturer pinned or ambassador slogged. And lots of combos/counters that don't play well together. ambassador makes torturer fairly weak. The heavy cursing/ambassador slog makes KC engine decks nearly impossible to pull off. I'm surprised ambassador is on the list, because I hate playing with it, it's an auto-veto for me unless IGG is is the game.  However in this set I'd have to open amb/amb. Try to avoid silvers and pray for an early MV and witch. But a lot of my play will have to depend on my opponent. If he goes for Jack, I'll have to slog him HARD with coppers (If I pick up a king's court this is very doable) to overcome my poor early game economy.  But no matter what I do a lot of this game will come down to shuffle luck. But I feel like if one player wins an ambassador war, Kings court nobles/woodcutter can overcome early game greening by a double jack deck that expected to be immune to curses.

Worst:
Trader
Library
Sea Hag
Chapel
Tribute
Jester
Mountebank
Possession
Golem
Loan

Boring game.  Full of cards I often veto.  Open trader chapel, maybe add a mountebank, depending on how the early game trashes go for me and my opponent. I don't like ignoring sea hag, but with both players starting 1 or 2 trashers, I don't see it being very effective.  Libray, trib, jester, and possession are all rendered pretty ineffective by Mountebank. And for golem to work I feel like you'd have to ignore trader. But I suppose you could chapel it.  But I think getting to golem,chapel, mountebank, mountebank would be too slow. and give your opponent too many silvers if he decides to trader up.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Axxle on January 09, 2013, 01:50:21 pm
Hooray, Council Room is back and I can obsess over what cards I'm good at playing again!

My Best Board:

$6 - Harem (66.0%)
$5 - Tribute (17.9%)
$4 - Sea Hag (75.9%), Horse Traders (63.2%), Spy (20.6%), Talisman (14.8%)
$3 - Oracle (15.5%)
$2 - Duchess (49.1%)
$P - Transmute (6.6%), Vineyard (22.9%)

Hm, I feel like there must be something wrong with the numbers; it says the public acquires Talisman 41.2% of games? That's crazy. Anyways, this isn't the most exciting board. I would open Sea Hag/Silver, get a couple Horse Traderses, and then start hammering on the Duchies. I think 3-piling on three of Duchy/Duchess/Curse/Estate will happen before someone going for Provinces will make enough points to matter, and I can't imagine this is much of a board for Vineyard.
Always Vineyard.  HT and Talisman is plenty.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: thirtyseven on January 09, 2013, 01:56:51 pm
Most of my Best cards are ones I don't buy nearly as often as others, especially Alchemist. The notable exception is IGG, which I love buying almost all the time and do win a lot with them. Of my worst cards, lots of villages and cantrips! The only one I can really say I'm poor at playing is Peddler, and possibly Hunting Party. Especially when I was a newbie I had no idea how to play them.

Best cards (in order, best one first):

Loan
Horse Traders
Horn of Plenty
Witch
Herbalist
Ill-Gotten Gains
Black Market
Alchemist
Develop
Nomad Camp

Strategy: IGG rush. Unlike some great players, I don't like the idea of getting a Witch as well. I would open IGG/Herbalist on 5/2, but 4/3 is interesting. I want a Silver, but would my other buy be HT, Develop, or NC? I'd open Develop, so I can Develop IGG into Gold and Horse Traders. My opponent would try an Alchemist stack and lose. :P

Worst cards (in order, worst one first):

Great Hall
Shanty Town
Village
Philosopher's Stone
Fishing Village
Mine
Cartographer
Inn
Hunting Party
Peddler

Strategy: This feels like a very weak board to me, and I can't see any good strategy here. Maybe that's why they're my worst cards haha. I think I'd try BM-Mine with HP support... getting one early Mine and Gold>HP>Silver from there. My opponent would somehow find a way to gain Peddlers effectively without +buy and destroy me. :P
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Jerk of All trades on January 09, 2013, 02:10:45 pm
Most of my Best cards are ones I don't buy nearly as often as others, especially Alchemist. The notable exception is IGG, which I love buying almost all the time and do win a lot with them. Of my worst cards, lots of villages and cantrips! The only one I can really say I'm poor at playing is Peddler, and possibly Hunting Party. Especially when I was a newbie I had no idea how to play them.

Best cards (in order, best one first):

Loan
Horse Traders
Horn of Plenty
Witch
Herbalist
Ill-Gotten Gains
Black Market
Alchemist
Develop
Nomad Camp

Strategy: IGG rush. Unlike some great players, I don't like the idea of getting a Witch as well. I would open IGG/Herbalist on 5/2, but 4/3 is interesting. I want a Silver, but would my other buy be HT, Develop, or NC? I'd open Develop, so I can Develop IGG into Gold and Horse Traders. My opponent would try an Alchemist stack and lose. :P

Worst cards (in order, worst one first):

Great Hall
Shanty Town
Village
Philosopher's Stone
Fishing Village
Mine
Cartographer
Inn
Hunting Party
Peddler

Strategy: This feels like a very weak board to me, and I can't see any good strategy here. Maybe that's why they're my worst cards haha. I think I'd try BM-Mine with HP support... getting one early Mine and Gold>HP>Silver from there. My opponent would somehow find a way to gain Peddlers effectively without +buy and destroy me. :P

I don't think any decent player would try alchemist with that first board. HT + IGG into duchies is unbeatable.  I'd got HT silver, and then HT on any 4s, silver on any 3s, and IGG to duchies on any 5+.  Develop is a possibility, but I'd probably skip it.

Your worst board is a boring game. silver/silver 1 gold, 3 hunting parties, then province > 1 mine> hunting party> great hall to finish.  It's usually a mistake going "BM" (buying gold instead of another hunting party) in hunting party games. 1 gold is almost always enough. In this game you could even skip mine and get a cartog instead. for guaranteeing your first draw with HP is a treasure.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: thirtyseven on January 09, 2013, 03:35:52 pm
I don't think any decent player would try alchemist with that first board. HT + IGG into duchies is unbeatable.  I'd got HT silver, and then HT on any 4s, silver on any 3s, and IGG to duchies on any 5+.  Develop is a possibility, but I'd probably skip it.

Your worst board is a boring game. silver/silver 1 gold, 3 hunting parties, then province > 1 mine> hunting party> great hall to finish.  It's usually a mistake going "BM" (buying gold instead of another hunting party) in hunting party games. 1 gold is almost always enough. In this game you could even skip mine and get a cartog instead. for guaranteeing your first draw with HP is a treasure.

I was completely joking about the alchemist play. The point I was trying to make is that opponents buy Alchemists far more often than I do. For the other game, I like the Cartographer idea; I usually overlook that card which may be why it's one of my worst cards.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: DWetzel on January 09, 2013, 03:39:36 pm
I've played too many games to get a result.  I haz a sad.   :'(
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: brokoli on January 09, 2013, 04:38:14 pm
After a year...

Best board :

Embargo, Lighthouse
Workshop
Baron, Militia
Counting house, Jester, Hunting party, Venture, Inn

(I am surprised to see venture here, and I don't really like militia, otherwise no big surprises but I'm glad to know I make good uses of counting house)

Interesting board ! Although embargo can be a very powerful counter, I think I would try HP-Baron, then switch to other things if hunting party is embargoed (probably something with Inn and maybe Jester).

Worst board

Fool's gold, Duchess
Fishing village
Envoy, Monument
Upgrade, Minion, Council room
Adventurer, Nobles

(I like to use adventurer even if there is no particular reason to go for it. I often boycott minion because it's not really fun. I might overrate fishing village and monument... and I never play upgrade well, don't know why. Otherwise I don't know why these cards are here)
I simply think Upgrade + minion is the best thing to do. Minion by itself is already a strong counter to FG.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: thirtyseven on January 09, 2013, 04:53:15 pm
I simply think Upgrade + minion is the best thing to do. Minion by itself is already a strong counter to FG.

You'll need to be more elaborate with your strategy, since Upgrade and Minion are at the same price point. ;)
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Powerman on January 09, 2013, 05:36:46 pm
Best:
$2 Chapel, Pawn, Secret Chamber
$3 Ambassador, Village
$4 Remodel, Remake, Envoy
$5 Minion
$6P Possession

Strategy:  2/5 Open Minion / Chapel.  3/4 Probably Chapel / Silver.  If my opponent goes for Ambassador I'll look to go into Possession.  Otherwise, try and build a Minion engine I think.

Worst:
$2 Crossroads
$3 Black Market, Steward
$4 Scout
$5 Governor, Upgrade, Saboteur, City, Haggler, Laboratory

Strategy: 2/5 Open Governor / Crossroads.  3/4 Probably Steward / Steward (depending on what's in the black market).  I'll probably try and build a basic Governor deck.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: heron on January 09, 2013, 05:43:03 pm
Let's see...

Best:
$6: Goons
$5: Ill-Gotten Gains, Mandarin, Treasury
$4: Young Witch, Ironworks
$3: Village, Workshop
$2 : Cellar, Duchess (Bane)
$0P: Transmute

That's not quite what I expected.
...goes to look up what transmute does...
Huh.
Okay, I think I'd open YW/Duchess into a straight IGG/Duchy rush. Yeah I'm boring, and I also think cursers aren't as effective against IGG as everyone else seems to think.
But if you ever get into an IGG rush with me, have fear of my 1.53 win rate with and 1.43 given available. I'm not sure how one manages to get that far above the norm for IGG rushes, but I've done it.

Anyway, onto my worst.
$7: Forge
$6: Fairgrounds
$5: Laboratory, Margrave, Torturer, Witch
$4: Smithy, Spy
$3: Oracle

It appears as though I suck at terminal draw. I'll have to work on that.
Upon seeing this board, I'd start seething in hatred of margrave (Like, I told Qvist mentioned in my comments of the survey that I wanted to give that card a -3 for my favorites rating. I wonder if he saw that).
After getting over that, I'd probably open silver/silver and play big money with 2 witches.

Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Polk5440 on January 09, 2013, 05:56:20 pm
Best Ten:
$8*: Peddler
$5: Duke, Ghost Ship, Governor, Jester, Treasury
$4: Militia, Mining Village, Young Witch
$2: Crossroads (Bane), Embargo

Crossroads is my 12th best card, so I put it as the bane. This kingdom is tricky.  I guess ideally I would like to open 5/2 with Governor/Embargo, embargoing either Duke or GS. Opening 3/4 I would do Crossroads/YW. I would like to get one Militia, one or two YW, a couple of Mining Villages, and a chain of Governors/Crossroads going (using the +3 cards more often than normal because of increased chances to draw a Militia, and even taking the time to remodel Coppers/curses into Crossroads and maybe an Embargo in addition to the standard gain Gold, remodel into Provinces). I would also consider picking up a Jester at some point.


Worst Ten:
$7: King's Court
$5: Cache, Horn of Plenty, Ill-Gotten Gains, Saboteur, Upgrade, Witch
$4: Feast, Thief, Worker's Village

No surprise on the cards here. I dislike many of these cards (and am just plain bad as using HoP even though I like it). I guess early game I would attempt to get two Witches. Then try to get Upgrade, KC, Gold, Worker's Village, and HoP to gain these cards, as well. Mid/late game I would probably try to get a Thief and Sabateur with KC-KC-Witch-Thief-Saboteur in mind in an attempt to destroy my opponent's (better: opponents') deck(s). If it turns into a slog instead (my deck gets destroyed first), then oh, well. I would just be careful about 3 piling and try to get the most points, wishing I was playing a different kingdom.

I think these are both interesting kingdoms.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Wingnut on January 09, 2013, 06:07:22 pm
Interesting seeing this after a year, especially considering the still relative newness of Hinterlands before (at the very least the early Hinterlands discovery process was a big factor last time around).

Here's mine

$7: Forge
$5: Highway, Minion, Witch
$4P: Golem
$4: Talisman, Envoy
$3P: Familiar
$3: Fishing Village
$2: Duchess

Evidently being good isn't all that fun. This looks about as fun as a root canal to play. 5-2 is an easy Witch/nothing open. 4-3 is a lot more interesting. I think the options are Envoy/FV, Potion/FV, Silver/FV or Silver/Silver. Envoy/FV looks like something that would be more fun to try rather than actually being effective here and a FV open can probably get the Potion later if Golem is a real target (with no +buy it probably isn't barring Highway/Forge shenanigans).

Worst Kingdom

$6: Fairgrounds
$5: Hunting Party, Mine, Mint, Cartographer, Jester, Tribute, Counting House
$3P: Philosopher's Stone
$2: Herbalist

And this is even worse to play. It's either Hunting Party Stack or Herbalist-PS. Not much else of value of here I don't think though Cartographer could be of some use.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Awaclus on January 09, 2013, 06:23:06 pm
Worst:
$7: King's Court
$6: Goons, Nobles
$5: Embassy, Hunting Party
$4: Tournament, Monument, Smithy
$3: Menagerie
$2: Fool's Gold

King's Court being there surprises me a bit, but other than that, I'm not surprised. I would go for Fool's Gold and then Tournament here, possibly with some HPs, but I'm not confident in this strategy at all. I'd open FG/FG with both possible opening splits.

Best:
$7: Expand
$5: Ghost Ship
$4: Bridge, Baron
$3P: Familiar
$3: Black Market, Masquerade
$2: Pearl Driver, Herbalist
$0P: Transmute

Potion/Masquerade is probably the strongest opening here. With 5/2, I'd go for Potion/Herbalist. In case I fail to have $3P after the reshuffle, I'd buy a Pearl Driver or Herbalist (Pearl Driver if I already have Herbalist, otherwise Herbalist) with $2P and Transmute with $1P. Ambassador and strong village cards would make me buy the Black Market, but I wouldn't open with it in any case.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: markusin on January 09, 2013, 06:46:33 pm
So I actually haven't played that many games on Isotropic, making for a relatively small sample sizes, but I still feel like
my list does a good job of reflecting what kind of Dominion player I am.

My best board:

$5:  Jester, Apprentice, Explorer, Mint, Embassy
$4:  Trader, Nomad Camp
$3:  Great Hall, Lookout
$2P: University

So I noticed that a lot of these cards can prove to be liabilities when gained. I have a lot of fun with these cards though, so I'm eager to get them if doing so is justified. There's a sense of satisfaction knowing that the card I have the highest effect with is Explorer.

As for this board, I'd try my hand at opening with Potion/Lookout, getting 2 or 3 Universities. I'd use the University to get a Jester, an Embassy, an Apprentice, and an Explorer, probably in that order. Any Excess terminals or Apprentices received from Jesters or Universities can just be used as fodder for the trashing-like-crazy Apprentices. Embassy, Apprentice, and lookout combined provide really good deck cycling while Jester and Explorer hopefully get my deckup to speed with their card gaining. I'd get a Province at the first opportunity for Explorer's sake since I have powerful draw capabilities. With the ability to gain and immediately top-deck Nomad Camp with University, I have easy access to +buy at the moment where my deck is strong enough to make good use of it. And who knows, Great Hall might even come into the picture at the end. Now does it beat BM+X?

Edit: with 5/2 opening I'd get the Jester and try to get Lookout and Potion on my second shuffle. Beyond that, a lot of my decisions will depend on what happens with the Jester.

My worst board:

$8*: Peddler
$6P: Possession
$5:  Wharf
$4:  Treasure Map, Noble Brigand
$3:  Tunnel
$2P: Scrying Pool
$2:  Haven, Lighthouse, Duchess

Most of these cards give me a headache, especially Haven and Scrying Pool when my opponent gets like 8 of them. These cards are ones where I often try to prove something by beating a deck with them without getting said card myself. That hasn't worked so well for these cards.

Given the opportunity to man up and play these cards well, I'd open Haven/Treasure Map. I'll get a couple of Wharfs use them to pick up some $2 cards and peddlers. I'd get a potion at some point too so that I can get Scrying Pool and possibly Possession. If I'm lucky, I can use Haven to time Possession so it's played when Lighthouse defense is not in effect. It's too bad the only card that can discard Tunnel is Noble Brigand and this would be a pretty good board for a Scrying Pool engine if a trasher was present.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Drab Emordnilap on January 09, 2013, 11:36:14 pm
If I'm lucky, I can use Haven to time Possession so it's played when Lighthouse defense is not in effect. It's too bad the only card that can discard Tunnel is Noble Brigand and this would be a pretty good board for a Scrying Pool engine if a trasher was present.

Possession isn't an attack.

Scrying Pool can also discard Tunnel. (Not a good strategy, though.)
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Powerman on January 09, 2013, 11:41:38 pm
Worst:
$7: King's Court
$6: Goons, Nobles
$5: Embassy, Hunting Party
$4: Tournament, Monument, Smithy
$3: Menagerie
$2: Fool's Gold

King's Court being there surprises me a bit, but other than that, I'm not surprised. I would go for Fool's Gold and then Tournament here, possibly with some HPs, but I'm not confident in this strategy at all. I'd open FG/FG with both possible opening splits.

I'd definitely go Tournament-Silver on 4/3.  Hopefully get an HP and a Monument T3/4.  Then race to get one early goon's, then as many KC and HP as possible.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: markusin on January 10, 2013, 12:11:10 am
If I'm lucky, I can use Haven to time Possession so it's played when Lighthouse defense is not in effect. It's too bad the only card that can discard Tunnel is Noble Brigand and this would be a pretty good board for a Scrying Pool engine if a trasher was present.

Possession isn't an attack.

Scrying Pool can also discard Tunnel. (Not a good strategy, though.)

Shows how much I know about Possession. It's crazy enough that you can even use KC on it. Not that Possession is truly a great card otherwise. It's just so costly to get.

You're also right about Scrying Pool, but it could only discard a Tunnel if Tunnel is on top. I would think multiple Tunnels in the deck would just mess up scrying pool too much overall.

Now that I'm playing on goko, I'm starting to get a better feel for how to use the cards on my worst list. Actually, I'm curious to know if Goko ever plans on implementing a statistics record similar to Council Room in the future.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Titandrake on January 10, 2013, 12:41:25 am
Best Board:
$7 King's Court
$5 Haggler, Cache, Library, Treasury
$4 Bureaucrat, Mining Village
$3 Wishing Well
$2P Apothecary
$2 Haven

Huh. Wasn't expecting that. I've never tried Apothecary/Cache before, so I'd probably try that. Maybe pick up a KC along the way for KC-Apothecary, and a Haggler or two to give pseudo +Buy.

Worst Board:
$5 Embassy, Cartographer
$4 Silk Road, Spice Merchant, Noble Brigand
$3 Fortune Teller, Develop, Scheme, Oracle
$2 Cellar

Yeah I really don't know how to use Cartographer, and I keep trying to not play Embassy-BM when I really should. I've experimented with Noble Brigand recently, and it's not bad, but I'm probably playing it a bit wrong. Eh, I'd still do Embassy-BM, hope that it gets more money than Brigand steals.

Here's my old post from over a year ago. According to councilroom, I was level 25 when I made that post, and now I'm 33.

On the first board, there isn't an especially strong BM strategy. Maybe Haggler/Library BM, but that doesn't sound too amazing. The lack of +Buy hurts an engine option, but Haggler helps with that. Apothecary/WW/Cache with Haggler support sounds interesting. King's Court sounds like a trap here, you only need $8. Still, not a bad pickup with Haggler. I'd probably go for the Apothecary engine, and lose to Library+Haggler BM.

On the second, Embassy-BM still sounds pretty good. I've come around to Noble Brigand being really good in money-based games, so I'd try to pick up a couple. Then, depending on how the game goes, a straightforward Province strategy or Silk Road slog both sound viable. A pure Silk Road strategy probably can't compete with Embassy's filtering power (especially with Cartographer and Cellar as fallback filters), but a Province + Silk Road hybrid plan sounds quite nice.

If I have time, maybe I'll look up my new top 10 and bottom 10.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: sudgy on January 10, 2013, 02:11:15 am
Mine are skewed from not playing with all the expansions, only playing with a few a few times, etc.  (I had three cards with a 2.00 rating!)
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Piemaster on January 25, 2013, 02:47:44 am
Best Board

Stash, Market, Navigator, Apprentice, Chapel, Adventurer, Bridge, Merchant Ship, Harem, Venture

Interesting board in that it contains a lot of engine enablers, but no villages to actually build an engine with.  Looks like a straight up Merchant Ship/BM to me with Markets for support.

I'm quite interested in the makeup of my best board.  It contains three cards that I very rarely buy (Stash, Navigator, Adventurer) and three more that I do buy fairly frequently, but it always seems far less than my opponents (Venture, Harem, Bridge).  It seems my strength in Dominion is more knowing about what cards to leave alone than what deck to actually build.


Worst Board

Pawn, Kings Court, Contraband, Crossroads, Fishing Village, Watchtower, Baron, Walled Village, Trade Route, Farming Village

Wow, here's a strange mix.  There are cards that I know I suck with and my opponents always seem to do better with than me (Watchtower, Baron).  There are three Villages, then there are cards that I actually thought I was fairly good with but it seems maybe I'm not (Crossroads, Contraband, Pawn, Trade Route).  The odd card that stands out is Kings Court.  I always perceive that I am quite unlucky with Kings Court.  I remember a lot of times getting to the pivotal turn of an engine mirror and drawing a hand like KC, KC, Silver, Chapel, Province.  Obviously luck evens out in the long term, but maybe I have just been running very bad with KC and that is reflected in my stats.  Or maybe I genuinely suck with it.

On this board I would build a Fishing Village/Watchtower engine, with some KC and Pawn thrown in for late-game fun.
Title: Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board
Post by: Morgrim7 on January 25, 2013, 03:05:46 am
okay, I'm certainly not the best player, but I'll try this out anyway.

Worst Board
Horn of Plenty, Secret Chamber, Thief, Noble Brigand, Mine, Develop, Pearl Diver, Apothecary, Ghost Ship, Loan

Ghost Ship BM with Loan to help?

Best Board
Margrave, Envoy, Farmland, Ill-Gotten Gains, Hoard, Mountebank, Watchtower, Market, Contraband, Harem

Watchtower, Maybe Mountebank, Margrave over Envoy for the +buy and Hoard for cash with Harems? Farmland might be nice too.

P.S. I just found out that I have never bought a Scout :)