Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: Jeebus on July 06, 2015, 06:28:16 pm
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In a money deck where you draw $5, should you get a Masterpiece and two Silvers, or just a Silver? Let's say there are nothing you want for $5, and let's say you haven't started greening so you just have your opening Estates. What's better for your deck, a Silver, or a two Silvers and a "Copper"?
And what about for $6? I assume Masterpiece + 3 Silvers is better than Gold? (Also assume no discard attacks.)
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Masterpiece for $5 is better than a Silver.
For $6, it depends. Gold is better before your first big Masterpiece buy, but Masterpiece is better if you already have a lot of Silvers.
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Along the same lines, is $5 Masterpiece better than Cache? Cache gives you 2 Coppers instead of 1, but an early Gold sets up a big buy in the next shuffle, even if it only combines with Coppers, while you normally need 2 Silver or Silver-equivalents to get $5 or $6.
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Along the same lines, is $5 Masterpiece better than Cache? Cache gives you 2 Coppers instead of 1, but an early Gold sets up a big buy in the next shuffle, even if it only combines with Coppers, while you normally need 2 Silver or Silver-equivalents to get $5 or $6.
On that note, when would a player buy Cache on a (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7d/Coin5.png/16px-Coin5.png)/(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Coin2.png/16px-Coin2.png) opening?
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Along the same lines, is $5 Masterpiece better than Cache? Cache gives you 2 Coppers instead of 1, but an early Gold sets up a big buy in the next shuffle, even if it only combines with Coppers, while you normally need 2 Silver or Silver-equivalents to get $5 or $6.
When you need one big turn to get going and that's more important than the smoothness of two Silvers. Like if you're prepping for your first big Masterpiece buy (and it's not a Feodum board). Or if you're trying to spike something like Forge that'll take care of the coppers later, or maybe an early Province for Tournament?
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Masterpiece for $5 ?
Skyrim during Steam Sales :P
Can cache be good in a moneylender/chapel/spice merchant deck ?
And Masterpiece... never played with this so far (or no game I recall this card to be relevant)
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Along the same lines, is $5 Masterpiece better than Cache? Cache gives you 2 Coppers instead of 1, but an early Gold sets up a big buy in the next shuffle, even if it only combines with Coppers, while you normally need 2 Silver or Silver-equivalents to get $5 or $6.
On that note, when would a player buy Cache on a (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7d/Coin5.png/16px-Coin5.png)/(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Coin2.png/16px-Coin2.png) opening?
Depends on the kingdom, of course. I would imagine Cache/Chapel to be a pretty OK opening, for example. COuncilroom would seem to concur http://councilroom.com/openings?card=Cache
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Masterpiece for $5 ?
Skyrim during Steam Sales :P
Can cache be good in a moneylender/chapel/spice merchant deck ?
And Masterpiece... never played with this so far (or no game I recall this card to be relevant)
Sure, gaining Coppers (with Cache) is good if you actually need some food for your trashers and you have the terminal space if needed. So you probably want Cache even over Gold in your draw engine if your deck is already trim and you can draw it reliably, especially if that means you can play your Forager/Spice Merchant for that extra +Buy that you need and it's probably nice enough to extend the usefulness of your Moneylender. Also, with Mercenary it's very nice because you gain two more Coppers to attack your opponent once more.
With Chapel it's less nice because the extra Coppers aren't useful and just some extra junk in your deck. But again, if your deck is already trim and you want some money and you only have 5$, it's okay.
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I dunno, man. A Cache/Chapel opening gives you a much higher chance of T5 Chapel Syndrome than any other $5 card --
Chapel/anything else = 2/12 = 17%
Chapel/Cache = 4/14 = 29%
That's 12% of games, one in every nine, that you just lose because of this opening, that Cache better be totally off-the-wall, bonkers-sauce, amaze-balls, rock star, super hero to be worth it.
But it's Cache, man. Chapel mitigates the awfulness of it, but if you want a Chapel, you want those Coppers gone yesterday and now you have two more of them to clean up, at best you're losing a turn of pace, that Gold better be worth it, man. That Gold better be so much better, like super-way-mega-ultra better, than any other card costing $5 or less that you are willing to assume all of this risk and loss of pace to get it in your deck before you have it under control.
COuncilroom would seem to concur http://councilroom.com/openings?card=Cache
A better statistic to look at might be this: http://councilroom.com/openings?card=Chapel
63 single Kingdom cards (I didn't count Nomad Camp/Chapel/Fool's Gold, it requires quite a bit of stuff to happen and it made my calculations harder) had better openings, and this was pre-Dark Ages, so there were only like 157 total cards available. That means the odds of there being no better option than Cache to open with your Chapel are roughly ((157-63)/157)^8 = 1.7% (OK this is just an upper bound but it helps make my point). I doubt that you could really apply this statistic very well to an actual game of Dominion, though.
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Heh, it's eleven places below Farming Village/Chapel, and I'm hard pressed to come up with boards on which Farming Village/Chapel is going to be your best opening.
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Chapel is the best card to supplement Cache as an opening (at least, pre-closure-of-Iso) but it's no surprise to learn that Cache is a terrible card to supplement an opening Chapel... I'm not suggesting Cache is a good card to open with, I'm saying if you draw 5/2 and you're thinking Cache is your best opening, Chapel is the other thing you want to open with.
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Along the same lines, is $5 Masterpiece better than Cache? Cache gives you 2 Coppers instead of 1, but an early Gold sets up a big buy in the next shuffle, even if it only combines with Coppers, while you normally need 2 Silver or Silver-equivalents to get $5 or $6.
Theoretically, cache is marginally better than a 5 coin masterpiece since it has higher variance (and you are less likely to get stuck with 7 coin hands in a province treasure game). In most practical situations, the other kingdom cards will make more difference with sifting, trashing, discarding, etc.
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Heh, it's eleven places below Farming Village/Chapel, and I'm hard pressed to come up with boards on which Farming Village/Chapel is going to be your best opening.
It's also 22 places below Silver/Chapel, which is always available.
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Chapel is the best card to supplement Cache as an opening (at least, pre-closure-of-Iso) but it's no surprise to learn that Cache is a terrible card to supplement an opening Chapel... I'm not suggesting Cache is a good card to open with, I'm saying if you draw 5/2 and you're thinking Cache is your best opening, Chapel is the other thing you want to open with.
I'm not sure about that either, a lot of times when I want Cache, it's because I want the Coppers, I'd even consider getting Cache over Gold in those games. I'm thinking slogs. In this case, I certainly don't want Chapel.
EDIT: some thoughts I had.
I could see a Squire/Cache opening on some boards, like a Silk Road slog or something?
I could also see a Cache/Chapel opening being best on a board where Noble Brigand and money is the only thing going on, you might want to add in Village or something? Ehh, maybe not.
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Squire/Cache would be a nice 5/2 opening on a Gardens board I think, but then you're getting into vanishingly unlikely 3-card combos... Squire/Gardens on its own is pretty nice.
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Maybe Beggar/Cache on a Gardens board?
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I mean, on Gardens boards, I'd just open double Beggar or double Squire in these cases. That's why I said Silk Roads.
But yeah these are sort of unlikely. I'm just saying these are more likely than wanting to open Cache/Chapel, those two cards don't seem like they work well in the same deck in the turns following the opening, at least I have a hard time believing that you want to build and engine (hence the Chapel) and there's absolutely nothing better for $5 or less than Cache.
Meh, I don't really like talking about edge cases, they're always there and plenty of other people around here like to talk about them anyways.
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Something I haven't seen mentioned is that Masterpiece for $5 works much better than Cache with trash for benefit. With T4B you have a $3 you want to get rid of and two silvers which can often be upgraded to $5's, or just kept to be decent enough cards. With Cache, you have a $5 that's really a $6 and two coppers that generally do little more than get trashed by T4B.
It's not usually a huge thing (how often do you get Cache, Masterpiece and a relevant T4B card in the same game?), and obviously cards like Moneylender are a bit of an exception (if you count that as T4B anyway) but well I guess it's significant enough to mention?
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Along the same lines, is $5 Masterpiece better than Cache? Cache gives you 2 Coppers instead of 1, but an early Gold sets up a big buy in the next shuffle, even if it only combines with Coppers, while you normally need 2 Silver or Silver-equivalents to get $5 or $6.
On that note, when would a player buy Cache on a (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7d/Coin5.png/16px-Coin5.png)/(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Coin2.png/16px-Coin2.png) opening?
Well the obvious example would be with a Hunting party setup without other non-standard coin sources. Getting to $9 is good and you have very high odds of hitting $5 for the first three hands. You might even be able to skip the silver and just bank on getting a second copper in Hand with your Hparties.
Another option is for some odd Duke boards. Gold/copper/copper is pretty nice for getting a good string of $5 hands for mass duchy buys. It can also help if you are doing some high price Duke setup, like Goons/Duke or maybe Altar/Duke where high odds of hitting $6 is pretty nice. In like fashion, if you hit $5/$2 on a Gardens board, then Cache is pretty nice. Two bonus gains, you can still get some terminal gainer (E.g. B-crat) and have an easier shot spiking provinces or Duchies.
Courtyard/Haven/Herbalist(this is dicier, but I could see times where the gamble could pay out) can also play well when you need to hit high cash early (the most obvious case being fishing for $7 with Forge).
I might consider it as a defensive play if I'm P1, nothing else is good sub $6, and Noble brigand is out. Buying the Silver just has too high of odds of getting beat by a high odds Nbrig buy.
So, yeah, low odds with multiple cards (and generally poor boards as many other things are vastly more powerful like most curse givers, trashers, etc.), but not beyond the realm of reason.