Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: ddubois on April 18, 2012, 07:09:45 pm
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http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/18/game-20120418-154209-3f24ff79.html
There's not a bit of doubt in my mind some engine involving Gardens/IGG./Trader was the right play on this board, but I somehow lost this game to a mundane bishop deck. He did get lucky to hit a turn 6 Gold after opening Sivler/Bishop/Bishop/Silver, and which he promptly re-drew and immediately ate 3 for 3 each of my Gardens he denied, but even still, my strategy seems so overpoweringly dominant, I don't get how this was even a contest. Did I diversify too much on my spread of Gardens/IGG/Trader/Prov? Should I have not gotten the GM on turn 8? Did I need to focus harder on piling out, rather than focus on deck growth like I did?
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I suspect you're underestimating how well Bishop counters gardens (see this article if you haven't (http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/02/23/counter-of-the-day-10-bishop-v-gardens/)). A little luck on your opponent's side and he's already gotten as much VP as your gardens will be worth, but with better long-term prospects.
And while IGG is a pretty good Gardens enabler, I'm not sure the Trader is necessary: it probably gets in the way of your Gardens buys. I mean, it's really good in some cases, but you probably want to pick just one of the two and stick with that.
Edit: P.S. One thing to keep in mind with Trader is that if you're trashing your Estates with it, you're gaining about 1/10 of a point per Gardens in your deck (on average) while losing 1 point. You need to have most of the Gardens to just *break even* on trashing an Estate. If the game goes long, you can get another 2/10 points per Gardens by Tradering the Silver, but I'm not convinced it's worth it to trash all your opening Estates if you're doing a Gardens rush.
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Also, you went for Traders first and IGGs later, when it should be the other way around. Trader is at its best in a Gardens deck when you can use it to trash expensive cards into big piles of Silver - i.e., IGGs. So get your Trader(s) after you have some IGGs in your deck to trash, rather than spinning wheels using the Traders to trash Estates. (Notably, if at least one of your initial Trader buys was a Silver, you could have started buying IGGs on turn 5, rather than turn 13.)
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It's actually a good board for bishops. None of the kingdom cards can take advantage of the free trashing and there are no superior terminal actions.
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I've found Bishop into IGG to be a pretty good strategy in itself. The curses slow the game down enough to let the bishop accumulate a ton of points. And trashing IGGs for 3 points each is great.
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He did get lucky to hit a turn 6 Gold
Since when turn 6 gold is considered luck ?! + one of my bishops missed shuffle - i would rather get bishop on turn 6 than get gold.
Your strategy was very obvious from the very beginning and i clearly knew how to counter it.
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Dumb question maybe? Why are there twelve kingdoms?
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There is a veto mode on isotropic auto-match where you don't see the cards before you get matched with your opponent, get 12 kingdom cards and every player vetos one of them (first player first), so that 10 of them remain.
The 12 chosen cards are Bishop, Gardens, Grand Market, Hamlet, Ill-Gotten Gains, Lookout, Mandarin, Militia, Native Village, Torturer, Trader, and Village.
ARTjoMS vetoes Torturer.
ddubois vetoes Militia.
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cards in supply: Bishop, Gardens, Grand Market, Hamlet, Ill-Gotten Gains, Lookout, Mandarin, Native Village, Trader, and Village
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If the game goes 29 turns, the Bishop is going to win every time. I think the mistake was going for hamlets. Yes it's a +buy, but getting extra coppers isn't worth that much. You get an extra half a point per copper, and he gets an extra 3-4 points per turn you extend the game. If you're going Gardens, the goal should be to 3-pile on IGG/Gardens/Curse asap, so I would probably open Trader/Silver and attack the IGGs and Gardens, only taking Hamlets as a consolation if I got stuck on $2.