Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: ehunt on June 02, 2016, 06:08:45 am
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Depends on the kingdom, and, for that matter, the traveller, but what are your thoughts? Mine are below, but they are wishy-washy.
Page: if there's a source of draw on the board then one page will suffice, unless she gets hit by the opponent's Warrior. Buying two feels like "insurance" against the latter possibility (and also potentially pumps up your Warrior)... something akin to opening Feast on a Witch board in base Dominion, but better. Probably the optimal number on such a board is 2.
If there's no source of draw, then Warrior acts as a lab, but you're always adding a Silver to your deck to get that Warrior, so without trashing, your net draw power doesn't change.
If there's no source of draw, but there is a way to trash silvers, especially for benefit, and there's great engine payload like Bridge or Goons, then you should gain basically as many pages as you can.
Peasant: usually I find myself buying exactly one. The Peasant pile is never a good target for a token from Teacher, because it can never have both +1 card and +1 action. Disciple is a great card, and it sucks to have to play it on a bad card (or even on thin air) to rush to teacher, and this makes you want more than one Peasant, but the deck-clog of the terminal, non-drawing Peasant, then soldier, is often just too much to justify buying a second.
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Man, get more pages.
Disciple is a great card (throne room + gain, wth) and soldier is a great attack (if you have 2, it's militia on steroids) that adds payload and page itself adds +buy? Everything you need is right there *in* the page line. The only thing you need is something to put tokens on, preferably a village of some kind (although discipling anything with +1 action works as well) and something to draw. So if there is like a village and a smithy, buy pages and buy lots of them. If you just have laboratory with +1 card or +1 action; that's all you need, really.
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I always get at least two Pages. One for Champion and one usually stays a Warrior. If it becomes apparent that my opponent is slower with Page upgrading than me, I might rush Pages for some big Warrior turns. In that case, I try to upgrade a couple more into Warriors later.
The Peasant line I feel is much more versatile. You pretty much always want Teacher if going for PEasant is good. Usually, if you get a second one, Disciple is a good final stage. But sometimes there's no +buy and you need a Peasant to stay a Peasant. Sometimes you play a Minion deck and Soldier is amazing payload (and the attack is stronger because your opponent will only have 4 cards in hand already). Fugitive is the one you pretty much never keep, which is a sad parabola on the current situation in Europe.
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This is a lot less board dependent than I once thought.
You get two, and you generally get one on the first shuffle and one on the second. For Page the main reason is as insurance against Warrior so you don't instantly lose the game, and it also helps you set up the Warrior pin if your opponent hasn't played enough Adventures to know not to skip Page. For Peasant, you want two so you can leave one at Disciple and get a bunch of copies of your favorite Action cards. The extra cycling helps too.
Sometimes you get more than two of one or the other dependent on if your opponent is an idiot or if you need components from Peasant. But you don't not get at least two.
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Depends on the board.
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I've yet to get seriously hurt by having any of my Warriors/treasure hunters trashed, so I'm slowly decreasing the number of Pages I get from "usually 2" to "usually 1", and I'll see if I get burned.
Otoh, in case there are other trashing attacks I'll consider taking one or two "insurance pages", because I've seen Champions and Heroes getting trashed by those and it's not beautiful.
Peasant is much more board-dependent. Soldier is better than the credit it gets and it's often a great way to have coin payload explosion.
Disciple is neat, but whether I'll invest on it depends on terminal space early in the game.
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Peasant is great for buying more Peasants.
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yeah, i'm also in the "usually 1 page & 2 peasants" stage now. have never gotten my traveler killed by a warrior. i think the best argument for 2 pages is the potential for your warrior to skip their hero or champion, but i feel like that's usually not worth junking your deck any further?
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I typically go for two Page. The second stops at Warrior.
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I think the more interesting question is when is the answer 0. I always want to buy them, because... doing stuff is fun. But it might take too long to be useful on some boards.
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If there's a good way to deal with the silvers, I usually get a bunch of Pages so I can get as many Warriors as possible. In one game I emptied the Warrior and Treasure Hunter piles and had a bunch of Foragers to trash Silvers. My opponent resigned the moment I got my engine online.
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For Peasant it depends on how good Disciple will be, also the number of both Peasant and Page are both highly dependant on the presence of other nice 2 - 3 cost cards.
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I think the more interesting question is when is the answer 0. I always want to buy them, because... doing stuff is fun. But it might take too long to be useful on some boards.
The only times I recall skipping them is when there is some really strong combo (Hermit/Market Square for instance) that just doesn't care about either Traveller lines at all. At least, those are the most obvious instances.
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I think the more interesting question is when is the answer 0. I always want to buy them, because... doing stuff is fun. But it might take too long to be useful on some boards.
Governor can make the game too quick (and decks too full of Silver) for the Travellers to pay off.
Anecdote:
One of my opponents (going first) opened with Plan (on Stonemason) and Stonemason (overbuying by $2 to gain two Pages). I decided not to pursue Page and opened with Salvager and Silver. My second opponent opened with Page and Salvager. My opponents mostly got Storytellers when they could (Caravan or Page when they couldn't), occasionally getting Stonemason + $5 overbuy for Storyteller x2 or Storyteller + Festival, or Storyteller + Butcher. I got myself an even mix of Governors and Storytellers (sometimes with Stonemason overbuys), and Caravans when I missed $5. I always used Governors for the Gold gaining, which slowed my opponents down a little (not a lot, because of their Storytellers). In the end, Stonemason and Governor won it for me, I ended the game on three piles (Storytellers, Stonemasons, and Governors) on turn 11 before either opponent had played their Champions (they both had them in their decks at this point). The most amusing moment of the game occurred on turn 10 when the opponent to my left gained 10 Silvers from his Treasure Hunter. If the opponent to my right also had a Treasure Hunter to play, the Silver pile would have emptied.
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I normally find myself spamming pages hoping to get a Champion and 5 Warriors before my opponent gets their Champion. It's probably not the best thing to do, but it's fun.
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Once you have champion, teacher, disciples you can build all sorts of crazy decks. All bets are off. Anything is possible. Break all the rules. Just don't spend too long playing with all the fancy cards instead of buying vp.
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Fugitive is the one you pretty much never keep, which is a sad parabola on the current situation in Europe.
(https://i.imgur.com/MpC2NY3.png)
You decide: is this a commentary on the tragedy of war and its inevitable loss of life, or is it just really bad Dominion advice?
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Fugitive is the one you pretty much never keep, which is a sad parabola on the current situation in Europe.
(https://i.imgur.com/MpC2NY3.png)
You decide: is this a commentary on the tragedy of war and its inevitable loss of life, or is it just really bad Dominion advice?
Fugitives are sad, both kinds.
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Someone asked when the Travellers are skippable... well, they're both awesome engine enablers, so you usually want them, but I'd say you skip them if either:
- Almost all other action cards are complete garbage (Scout/Transmute/Harvest/Thief/stuff like that) and the engine is never ever going to happen even with huge support;
- (for Page) All relevant action cards are non-terminal and there are no good Attacks, so Champion is moot;
- (for Peasant) The board is so strong and lightning-fast already that Teacher is just too slow.
So for them to be skippable, you need either an extremely strong or an extremely weak board, basically. At least that's what I think.
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Don't forget for Page to be completely skippable there need to be no key cards at $3 or $4, and also no cost reduction. Otherwise Warrior will be too much of a threat.
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Someone asked when the Travellers are skippable... well, they're both awesome engine enablers, so you usually want them, but I'd say you skip them if either:
- Almost all other action cards are complete garbage (Scout/Transmute/Harvest/Thief/stuff like that) and the engine is never ever going to happen even with huge support;
- (for Page) All relevant action cards are non-terminal and there are no good Attacks, so Champion is moot;
- (for Peasant) The board is so strong and lightning-fast already that Teacher is just too slow.
So for them to be skippable, you need either an extremely strong or an extremely weak board, basically. At least that's what I think.
Getting at least one Peasant on a strong lightning fast board is still almost the right call. Duplicates, well, they get you more stuff. So, sometimes you just want to stop on that. But, even getting Teacher on those kind of boards can add extra reliability. Also, on boards that seem super weak, sometimes Teacher makes what appears a weak board into an actual engine. Although, figuring out how to build said engine can be a challenge.
As far as skipping Page, I think it's pretty rare. On weak boards, I tend to do the Warrior/Champion thing which will destroy all $3 and $4 costs in the other players deck, thus making only copper, gold and provinces any good. Silver and Duchies get trashed. On strong fast boards, Champion might be skipable if the right parts are there.
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As far as skipping Page, I think it's pretty rare. On weak boards, I tend to do the Warrior/Champion thing which will destroy all $3 and $4 costs in the other players deck, thus making only copper, gold and provinces any good. Silver and Duchies get trashed. On strong fast boards, Champion might be skipable if the right parts are there.
Duchy costs $5, so for the most part greening won't be impacted by a Warrior pin.
A surprising number of boards aren't impacted by Warrior at all, but the Page line is just so low opportunity cost to even half-ass it's upgrade path (a few terminal plays and 2 treasure gains) that upgrading to Champion is usually worth the effort even when it isn't particularly good. If it weren't so easy, I would say Page Is Far More Skippable Than People Think.
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As far as skipping Page, I think it's pretty rare. On weak boards, I tend to do the Warrior/Champion thing which will destroy all $3 and $4 costs in the other players deck, thus making only copper, gold and provinces any good. Silver and Duchies get trashed. On strong fast boards, Champion might be skipable if the right parts are there.
Duchy costs $5, so for the most part greening won't be impacted by a Warrior pin.
A surprising number of boards aren't impacted by Warrior at all, but the Page line is just so low opportunity cost to even half-ass it's upgrade path (a few terminal plays and 2 treasure gains) that upgrading to Champion is usually worth the effort even when it isn't particularly good. If it weren't so easy, I would say Page Is Far More Skippable Than People Think.
The problem is that hero is better than champion on bm boards.
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Fugitive is the one you pretty much never keep, which is a sad parabola on the current situation in Europe.
(https://i.imgur.com/MpC2NY3.png)
You decide: is this a commentary on the tragedy of war and its inevitable loss of life, or is it just really bad Dominion advice?
If I ever make a band, I'm calling us Sad Parabola.
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Going for Page and Peasant is almost always the right thing to do. They're almost too strong, I think.
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Fugitive is the one you pretty much never keep, which is a sad parabola on the current situation in Europe.
(https://i.imgur.com/MpC2NY3.png)
You decide: is this a commentary on the tragedy of war and its inevitable loss of life, or is it just really bad Dominion advice?
If I ever make a band, I'm calling us Sad Parabola.
http://www.last.fm/music/Sad+Parabola
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Fugitive is the one you pretty much never keep, which is a sad parabola on the current situation in Europe.
(https://i.imgur.com/MpC2NY3.png)
You decide: is this a commentary on the tragedy of war and its inevitable loss of life, or is it just really bad Dominion advice?
If I ever make a band, I'm calling us Sad Parabola.
http://www.last.fm/music/Sad+Parabola
Aw. That's too bad. At least no one has taken my band name for the future, 'Edgelord'.
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Fugitive is the one you pretty much never keep, which is a sad parabola on the current situation in Europe.
(https://i.imgur.com/MpC2NY3.png)
You decide: is this a commentary on the tragedy of war and its inevitable loss of life, or is it just really bad Dominion advice?
If I ever make a band, I'm calling us Sad Parabola.
http://www.last.fm/music/Sad+Parabola
That makes me a sad pandaparabola.
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There are several broad strategies that I pursue:
Page: normally 1 or many. Singleton is just to get quickly to Champion to enable a big engine & protect myself from Warrior - basically I build something to cycle quickly and then rapidly bulk out on terminal draw & payload to green. Many is where I want to pound the opponent with Warrior card kills. Even I do not kill the enemy Warrior(s), I find you can get huge mileage by destroying all their infrastructure and having pretty good of flipping Champion or Hero. Something like Warehouse/Smithy/Page is a one strategy while something like Chapel/Iw/Page can be a many option. Note that when playing "Many" you will leave many of your pages un-upgraded, Treasure hunter is terrible for killing the enemy and while more warriors are nice you need to be cautious about filling the deck with cards.
Peasant: 2 or higher. Normally I am either gunning for Disciple, in which case I will draw deck and a second Disciple will be huge ... or I am going for Teacher to enable a quick gain of newly non-terminal or newly - big drawing cards. In either case having that second Disciple is pretty nice. More rarely I will build a deck that gets cash from Soldier (e.g. turning Spies into Labs) and grab a few extra Peasants to help the cause. Unlike the Page line, nothing useless is gained so the only downsides are bloating the deck by a card and having a dead card when Travellers collide, which is mostly a non-issue after Soldier.
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Fugitive is the one you pretty much never keep, which is a sad parabola on the current situation in Europe.
(https://i.imgur.com/MpC2NY3.png)
You decide: is this a commentary on the tragedy of war and its inevitable loss of life, or is it just really bad Dominion advice?
If I ever make a band, I'm calling us Sad Parabola.
http://www.last.fm/music/Sad+Parabola
That makes me a sad pandaparabola.
The question is, how do you get past the sad parabola?