Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: Markov Chain on March 08, 2012, 10:37:34 pm
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5-player game.
Kingdom: Pearl Diver (bane), Native Village, Fortune Teller, Smugglers, Cutpurse, Sea Hag, Young Witch, Caravan, Farming Village, Horn of Plenty, Harvest.
How do you start 4/3?
Young Witch/Silver looks like a natural opening, with the expectation that you will have curses and estates to discard, so the Young Witch discard won't hurt much, while nobody will be buying Pearl Divers. In our group, nobody tried a Sea Hag, but the other 4/3 players opened with Cutpurse or Caravan rather than either curser.
And, for that matter, how do you start 5/2? Horn of Plenty to get Native Villages (or Pearl Divers if a lot of Young Witches are around) early, followed by better cards later, looks like a good choice. On the other hand, Harvest will cycle your deck, and will make use of the curses.
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My money is on Young Witch. Sea Hag's main advantage is that it top-decks the Curse, but Young Witch weakens that. Generally, Young Witch's filtering/cycling is pretty nice in cursing games.
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The general answer to the question would be YW most times. However, Pearl Diver isn't a weak bane at all.
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Indeed, Pearl Diver isn't the strongest bane in the world but it's pretty solid in this set, especially since the only card that could dead draw it is Young Witch. I'd favor Sea Hag in this set up.
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I'd favour Sea Hag as well.
Its curse goes in before the shuffle, which helps. Also, pearl diver isn't that hard a bane to come by, and is not without use either. A Sea Hag vs Young Witch cursing contest in this set I'd expect to end up in the Sea Hag's favour, with stronger money in the sea hag deck sooner.
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One thing to consider in a 5 player game is that there are 40 curses so if everybody else hands out curses and you don't the curses split 10-8-8-7-7 (absent defense). If you buy a curser then they split 8-8-8-8-8. It is quite possible that ignoring the curser here is the better option (possibly open caravan silver or if they go for young witch pick up a quick pearl diver or two).
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Hey, Pearl diver is a very good bane ! of course, hamlet or scheme are much better, but a cantrip is usually a good bane, and Pearl diver is an underrated card...
And here, pearl diver has a nice synergy with Farming village (put a victory card on the top of your deck, discard it with FV).
Farming village is also a nice counter to Sea hag, but I would still take a Sea hag.
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With a really weak (terminal) bane, Young Witch is going to be better a lot of the time, but by merit of being non-terminal, pearl diver is not that bad of a bane. I think this choice often depends on what $5 cards are around. Young witch/Silver gets you to $5 much better than Sea Hag/bane. But in this kingdom you have no reason to rush to $5. So I'd go with Sea Hag/bane.
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While PD isn't a terrible bane, there are no extra buys on this board (except for the pseudo-extra-buy from Horn of Plenty). If people are diverting a substantial number of $3+ buys into PD, it's pretty weak. If you happen to get $2 buys (or extra buy-alikes from Horn of Plenty), it's pretty strong.
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The general answer to the question would be YW most times. However, Pearl Diver isn't a weak bane at all.
My money is on Young Witch. Sea Hag's main advantage is that it top-decks the Curse, but Young Witch weakens that. Generally, Young Witch's filtering/cycling is pretty nice in cursing games.
I would say Sea Hag is usually better than Young Witch, and it is absolutely better in this situation. Granted, they are both powerful $4 cards, and YW is better some of the time. But not usually, and not here. For one thing, Pearl Diver is a pretty good Bane card, or as good as any other non-terminal.
It's absolutely essential to deal out your share of the curses, and Sea Hag is what is going to do that for you.
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Simulations show that opening Sea Hag/Pearl Diver (and buying 2 more Pearl Divers before Silvers) will beat Young Witch/Silver 56-40.
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- YW normally, but pearl diver isn't a bad bane, since it's non-terminal (imagine if moat was +1 cards/+1 actions instead of +2 cards). My money is on Sea Hag on this board.
- On 5/2, I would curse my luck and pick up Sea Hag/Pearl Diver. At least the pearl diver will still probably be more useful than normal, due to being the bane.
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I'll hop on the Sea Hag train here, and in most cases like this one, but... why not both? I would play this game defensively from the start, opening Sea Hag/Pearl Diver regardless of the split, picking up a young witch ASAP, some Silver, and a Horn as soon as you hit $5, using it to snag Pearl Divers/Farming Villages (or even Native Villages - but with $2s you probably want PDs first, less for your own deck and more to deny them to your opponents) and then a second YW. I can't really comment further without a feel for just how fast piles are going to run out here, but almost no matter what my feeling is that being the biggest aggressor in the curse war is the winning strategy here.
Honestly though, the big wild card here is Cutpurse. Not only does it make both cursers worse by decreasing handsize, you have to worry about it hitting multiple times. If more than one person goes for it in the open, I would pay much more attention to Caravan. As far as Caravan is concerned otherwise (assuming nobody or just one player goes Cutpurse), it is probably the right move to just ignore it, since its popularity means you're only going to end up with 1-2 even if you really want it anyway, and I could be wrong, but I don't see that as being at all worth delaying the second curser. Not to mention that opening with it here seems absolutely insane to me.
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I'll hop on the Sea Hag train here, and in most cases like this one, but... why not both? I would play this game defensively from the start, opening Sea Hag/Pearl Diver regardless of the split, picking up a young witch ASAP, some Silver, and a Horn as soon as you hit $5, using it to snag Pearl Divers/Farming Villages (or even Native Villages - but with $2s you probably want PDs first, less for your own deck and more to deny them to your opponents) and then a second YW. I can't really comment further without a feel for just how fast piles are going to run out here, but almost no matter what my feeling is that being the biggest aggressor in the curse war is the winning strategy here.
Honestly though, the big wild card here is Cutpurse. Not only does it make both cursers worse by decreasing handsize, you have to worry about it hitting multiple times. If more than one person goes for it in the open, I would pay much more attention to Caravan. As far as Caravan is concerned otherwise (assuming nobody or just one player goes Cutpurse), it is probably the right move to just ignore it, since its popularity means you're only going to end up with 1-2 even if you really want it anyway, and I could be wrong, but I don't see that as being at all worth delaying the second curser. Not to mention that opening with it here seems absolutely insane to me.
I mostly agree, but why not 2 Sea Hags? You really, really, really want to deal out those Curses, and people are definitely going to be buying Pearl Divers, because $2 in hand is going to happen quite often.
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I mostly agree, but why not 2 Sea Hags? You really, really, really want to deal out those Curses, and people are definitely going to be buying Pearl Divers, because $2 in hand is going to happen quite often.
Second Sea Hag is probably better for dealing out curses, YW might be better for cycling quickly / avoiding terminal collision / helping Horn of Plenty. Depends on whether or not those Pearl Divers actually do get bought, which it sounds like they didn't here.