Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Puzzles and Challenges => Topic started by: jotheonah on December 26, 2011, 12:47:14 am
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So you're playing against an obnoxious Saboteur-playing opponent. Or perhaps it's a 5-player game and everyone has a Sab or two. Or a King's Court and a Sab.
Luckily, this kingdom has nearly every $2 card you could ask for. Unluckily, the two conspicuously absent $2 cards are Moat and Lighthouse.
Still, you are determined to be the nice guy and not buy a Saboteur of your own (it would just get sabotaged anyway). Instead, you're going to show them all. You're going to build a Saboteur-proof deck.
- Fastest deck you can
- No buying anything that costs more than $2 except for Victory cards
- Your victory cards WILL get hit by Saboteur if you don't protect them somehow
My best deck gets all 8 Provinces in about 20 turns, and roughly 5/6ths of my Provinces stay Provinces.
I think my solution is sort of obvious, so if someone comes up with a more creative one I'll be duly impressed.
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Mean Mr. Mustard's Apothecary/Native Village combo seems pretty strong here. Can get all 8 Provinces in 18/19 turns and hide them on the Native Village mat the turn after purchasing.
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Of course, your Potion's going to get hit at some point, and there's nothing to stop the Province that you got from getting hit in between turns.
I'm going to assume that per the rule in the OP, cards with P in their cost are disallowed. Kind of sucks; I can imagine Scrying Pool being a good option for this puzzle.
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Here's a start strategy, which has many possible improvements. Breaks no buying anything more than $2, but it is Saboteur-proof. I'm not going to bother figuring out average turns right now. Maybe later. It might not even be valid for this puzzle anyways.
Open Chapel/Secret Chamber. Chapel down to a 4 card deck: Chapel, Secret Chamber, 2 Copper
Secret Chamber -> buy Silver (CH, SC, cop, cop, sil)
Chapel a Copper, then buy Silver (CH, SC, cop, sil, sil)
Chapel Secret Chamber, buy Bishop (CH, Bishop, cop, sil sil)
Bishop Chapel, buy Gold (Bishop, cop, sil, sil, Gold)
Now you can do a 5-card Bishop trashing Province bonanza and they can't do anything about it. HAHAHAHAHA
Also Secret Chamber opens up some possibilities involving decks with more than 5 cards. Use the reaction to put cards that won't be hit on top, saving the cards you want. It would only be guaranteed to work on 6 card decks though. Otherwise you could have the 2 cards in your deck be Secret Chamber and the card you want to protect.
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Just playing straight Fool's Gold seems like it'd be pretty decent. Or chapel+fool's gold. Or Chapel+courtyard+Fool's Gold.
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Seems like Chapel Fool's Gold is the way to get Provinces. With Courtyard and Native Village you can save them from beeing trashed.
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The 5/6 in the OP makes me suspect the answer he's looking for is:
Trash down to Chapel, Fool's Gold x3, Hamlet, Native Village.
Use Hamlet to discard Chapel, put it on the Native Village mat, Buy Province.
Now there's a 5/6 chance the Province will be in your hand next time, and as long as you draw the Hamlet as well you can push it to the Native Village mat before buying another (so actually your probability of keeping the Province, assuming you're skipping turns when you don't draw Hamlet, is 4/6 + 5/36 = 29/36).
You can probably manage Titandrake's solution as well without cheating:
Don't buy Bishop, just wait for someone to Saboteur your first Province.
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That is the strategy I was looking for exactly, mith. It also might be possible to do something decently effective with Crossroads, Estates, and Secret Chamber especially since the SC gives you some control about which things start out in your hand.