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Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Let's Discuss ... => Topic started by: werothegreat on March 17, 2016, 09:50:14 am

Title: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: werothegreat on March 17, 2016, 09:50:14 am
(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/c/cf/Royal_Carriage.jpg)

Crafted from the finest heirloom pumpkins.

-How does it compare to other Throne Room variants?
-How many will you usually want?
-Is it usually better to call one or two of them, or to just call every single one off the mat for a powerful card?
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: E.Honda on March 17, 2016, 10:05:58 am
I havent played with it but those are my thougts:
Compared to throne room, the downside is opportunity cost if there are good 5s around that you want to use it on. The upside is of course that colliding it with that 5 you want to play is a lot easier as you can just wait and have a guaranteed collision as long as it sits on your tavern mat. Being able to just call it after playing the desired Action seems really strong so i dont know where to Put this card. I think its strong but its hard to say more without having played with it
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: Watno on March 17, 2016, 10:16:43 am
Somehow despite having played a considerable amount of Adventures, this card has never shown up I think.
A huge difference to Throne Room is the way it stacks. You can call 7 Royal Carriages on a single Bridge, but you can't play a Royal carriage on a royal carriage to get two card's effects doubled like with Throne Room.

I guess it's strongest in Mega-turn strategies where you store them all on your mat and then call them to play a strong action lots of times. On the other hand, I can't think of anything but bridge this is really good with.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: Roadrunner7671 on March 17, 2016, 10:30:02 am
This is good with attacks that don't stop hurting (Torturer, Rabble, a Knight, Saboteur, Warrior, etc). It's also nice with cost reducers.

Overall a strong card, I would say.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: Ankenaut on March 17, 2016, 10:34:19 am
I just played a game with Giant and Royal Carriage (and no villages). Man that was fun. You can just save them up and string together a whole bunch of a terminal action.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: drsteelhammer on March 17, 2016, 10:58:17 am
This is good with attacks that don't stop hurting (Torturer, Rabble, a Knight, Saboteur, Warrior, etc). It's also nice with cost reducers.

Overall a strong card, I would say.

It's a lot worse with Knights than TR/KC, since you can't use RC when they die. Also, what is the synergy with cost reducers?
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: Chris is me on March 17, 2016, 12:41:07 pm
Royal Carriage competes with other 5s less than you'd think, because it basically is another one of those same 5s. After the first you'd rather just have another RC unless it's part of a multi piece engine.

In games where you want to play an Attack early and as much as possible, Royal Carriage is nearly always better than a second copy of the same attack. Royal Carriage can't collide, it can be used the same turn you play it, and it can be saved for future turns if need be. It's almost strictly better than Throne Room because of this, and it is a lot less risky and more versatile.

You know how the first person to collide KC and Mountebank basically wins? It's a lot easier to get 2 RC's on the mat, then play Mountebank and call them, than it is to buy KC in a Mountebank game and then collide them. Same basic thing applies to any number of other attacks, like Torturer, Saboteur, Ambassador, Sea Hag, etc.

Royal Carriage is just super good a lot of the time. Winning the RC split is a factor in more games than you would think!
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: convolucid on March 17, 2016, 06:22:49 pm
Royal Carriage competes with other 5s less than you'd think, because it basically is another one of those same 5s. After the first you'd rather just have another RC unless it's part of a multi piece engine.

In games where you want to play an Attack early and as much as possible, Royal Carriage is nearly always better than a second copy of the same attack. Royal Carriage can't collide, it can be used the same turn you play it, and it can be saved for future turns if need be. It's almost strictly better than Throne Room because of this, and it is a lot less risky and more versatile.

I agree with this, but the caveat is that in strong kingdoms (common occurrence w/ RC), playing RC and nothing else is still bad, even though your RC is not dead in the way a Throne Room would be. A turn where your opponent draws everything and you only stack your Tavern can decide the game. Good trashing or deck control (Scheme, Scavenger, or just counting cards) can solve the problem, but if you can't do that, then you still want multiple RC targets so that you have something to multiply every turn.

Overall, RC is really strong, and it's much better than Throne Room. Don't underestimate the power of playing draw, and deciding afterwards whether to double it. The added information empowers your decision-making tremendously.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: ConMan on March 20, 2016, 08:14:22 pm
Pretty nice in combination with Ranger and Giant, in that you can decide how many times to flip the Journey token as you go. For example, you play Ranger once with Journey token face-down, so you flip it face-up and get your 5 cards, call the RC to flip it face-down, look at your hand and go "Hey, that's already enough for a Province", leave that other RC on the mat for next time. In fact, in general the ability to wait until after resolving a card play before deciding whether to play it again is a great strength over TR - play your cantrip, *then* work out if you need to make it a Village; play Torturer, see whether opponents take the Curse or the discard, *then* either play it again to double the pain or save it for another day.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: eHalcyon on March 20, 2016, 10:19:17 pm
play Torturer, see whether opponents take the Curse or the discard, *then* either play it again to double the pain or save it for another day.

Mind games: you play Torturer and have RC on the mat, ready to call.  I have a defense (say, Moat or Watchtower) but maybe I take a hit anyway just so you'll use up the RC as I block the second one.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: Seprix on March 22, 2016, 10:44:23 am
A thing to note is that Royal Carriage does not work with cards that are no longer in play, such as Death Cart trashed, Pillage, Mining Village trashed, etc. This is not normally a problem with Throne Room variants to my knowledge.

Once something is put on the Tavern mat, it can be activated immediately, right? There's not really any delay in using Royal Carriage then, it just has to be done a little differently. Simply play Royal Carriage, play your action, activate Royal Carriage. It's completely worth the extra $1 for the versatility in playing TR whenever you want. Hell, Throne Room is still great at a $5 cost.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: Mavy2k on March 22, 2016, 06:06:19 pm
When you call this card you replay the last action card and do not play RC as that card?
I´m almost certain that you replay the action card , but I am not entirely sure.
Could someone help out and verify?
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: Watno on March 22, 2016, 06:11:18 pm
Well, it says so on the card, why would it be different?
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: Mavy2k on March 22, 2016, 06:18:15 pm
I am not sure because it says "Action" and not "Action card".

Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: drsteelhammer on June 11, 2016, 11:11:03 pm
I successfully executed the Masquerade/RC pin! In this particular case, Quarry and Save were very helpful so I could get my pin going on Turn 11 already. (Not strictly, opponent bought Save and I had to pass one more card, so T12 it began officially). I completely missplayed the early game, I could have definitely began earlier.

My opponent resigned in the rebuilding phase unfortunately, but there was no real coming back for him.

I'll post the log tomorrow when it's available!
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: traces Around on June 12, 2016, 01:01:52 am
I successfully executed the Masquerade/RC pin! In this particular case, Quarry and Save were very helpful so I could get my pin going on Turn 11 already. (Not strictly, opponent bought Save and I had to pass one more card, so T12 it began officially). I completely missplayed the early game, I could have definitely began earlier.

My opponent resigned in the rebuilding phase unfortunately, but there was no real coming back for him.

I'll post the log tomorrow when it's available!
Great (maybe?) to hear! Looking forward to seeing the log from a human v. human game. Though, to be honest, this is probably the worst thing to come out of Adventures.

Being able to "hide" royal carriages makes fully rebuilding completely unnecessary though. Careful timing at the end of copper pile is all that is needed (and is much meaner) - just never allow the opponent to get to 3 copper, then when you do, buy a silver, get the opponent back down to 0 cards with you having the silver, and then empty the estates.
Log for this against a bot: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160612/log.0.1465707211418.txt (http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160612/log.0.1465707211418.txt)
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: JW on June 12, 2016, 01:32:56 am
Being able to "hide" royal carriages makes fully rebuilding completely unnecessary though. Careful timing at the end of copper pile is all that is needed (and is much meaner) - just never allow the opponent to get to 3 copper, then when you do, buy a silver, get the opponent back down to 0 cards with you having the silver, and then empty the estates.

Does this work if your opponent makes sure to always leave an even number of coppers in the supply after their turns? Then you'll get back to 3 copper on the same turn that they do.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: traces Around on June 12, 2016, 02:15:35 am
Being able to "hide" royal carriages makes fully rebuilding completely unnecessary though. Careful timing at the end of copper pile is all that is needed (and is much meaner) - just never allow the opponent to get to 3 copper, then when you do, buy a silver, get the opponent back down to 0 cards with you having the silver, and then empty the estates.

Does this work if your opponent makes sure to always leave an even number of coppers in the supply after their turns? Then you'll get back to 3 copper on the same turn that they do.
Yes, and I actually did the particular game in the log maintaining an even number of coppers in the supply for my turns to ensure that I wasn't about to say something stupid.

I buy the 6th to last copper on my turn 43. Turn 44 I do a manipulation with masquerade to make it so that the bot is back to 0 cards and I am at 1 copper with 4 left in the supply. So then even though I will be buying the "even" copper, the bot will only get to two of them.
The manipulation in turns 47 and 48 is actually the real trick - requires perfect ordering. This pin actually gives you complete control over both your and your opponent's deck when maintained, but reducing the opponent to 0 cards while having the correct one yourself is tricky.

That being said, I would recommend practicing the endgame on this one if you think you are going to pull it off against someone who is going to be persistent about not giving up - otherwise you set yourself up for a draw or loss - and it may also give you an idea about how to disrupt an opponent if you wish to be persistent yourself. A bit of a pain in the current online version - having the new one's logs would really help.
Title: Re: Let's Discuss Adventures Cards: Royal Carriage
Post by: drsteelhammer on June 12, 2016, 09:54:26 am
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160612/log.0.1465700826348.txt <-Log

Good point about the endgame, I only heard second hand information about it and improvised on the fly ;) (Don't know where this has been discussed yet)

Here, NV could have denied the pin, but fortunately my opponent didn't react fast enough to what I was doing.