Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion Articles => Topic started by: Davio on July 12, 2011, 07:40:32 am
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I ran into this pretty nifty combo today.
It's not really rocket science and you can derive it from the title, but I'll give a short explanation anyway.
With both Sea Hag and Jester in play, play (with 2 actions) Sea Hag first and then Jester.
Your opponent puts a Curse on top and immediately gains another one, because you obviously choose your opponent as the receiver of Jester's action.
Double Cursing, yay! The only drawback is that your opponent gets to discard both Curses and leaves nothing on top of his deck, but this is a minor detail.
Jester has this interaction with which you control your opponent's top card with Spy too, which is kind of like the obvious one.
Ghost Ship and Secret Chamber are less obvious, it depends if your opponent is more likely to put good cards on top of his deck or bad cards. Either is fine for you, because you get to choose who gets it. If an opponent immediately plays Secret Chamber to your Jester, your opponent will likely put an average card on top, like Silver, which is still decent.
I am mentioning all these other Jester possibilities, because I couldn't find a Strategy article about it.
Here is another combo with Jester: Fortune Teller / Jester (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=128.0)
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Have you tried Sea Hag/Sea Hag or Witch/Witch? ;)
Jester's a weak attack, and it's not really worth designing a deck around consistently using it to give out a curse. There are already other attacks that consistently give out curses! The great thing about Jester (especially in 3p and 4p games) is that you can use it to gain good cards yourself, with little to no risk of helping your opponents if no cards you want are revealed.
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Have you tried Sea Hag/Sea Hag or Witch/Witch? ;)
Jester's a weak attack, and it's not really worth designing a deck around consistently using it to give out a curse. There are already other attacks that consistently give out curses! The great thing about Jester (especially in 3p and 4p games) is that you can use it to gain good cards yourself, with little to no risk of helping your opponents if no cards you want are revealed.
My opponent was once on the receiving end of an unlikely Sea Hag/Ghost Ship combo almost every turn. I sincerely felt bad by the end of the game.
As guided said, Sea Hag and Jester can be a bit difficult to pull off correctly, consistently. I have, however, used Jester and Spy/Scrying Pool to moderate success, and I think it is slightly easier to do that than the Fortune Teller/Jester combo.
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Now Spy/Jester I can get behind. Really the worst case for Jester is revealing a Copper, and Silver (or at times any number of terminal actions) isn't much better. Spy can definitely help there. But that said I wouldn't look at a board and say "Ooh, Spy and Jester, that's the deck I should build!" ... It's more like, if I've got Jesters in my deck, Spy becomes a pretty decent buy when I have exactly $4.
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Technically, Sea HagX2 or WitchX2 has a similar effect on the opponent's deck as Hag/Jester (though HagX2 leaves a curse on top). Jester will probably be more useful than Hag once the curses run out. Witch is alway a tiny drawer.
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Also, Jester is one of the few cards in Dominion where you can gain an Alchemy card before your buy phase. There's nothing quite like Jestering an Alchemist.
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Jester probably gets worse rather than better given there are cursing attacks. After the curses are gone, the Jester has some risk of being a $5 cost terminal silver.
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Actually, the jester can be good in a cursing game after you've already softened up an opponent's deck with a sea hag or even a witch. The +2 coins from playing a jester can make a crucial difference and whilst it can't give curses once the curse pile is exhausted, well neither could a second witch!
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But, say, fortune teller is probably going to be significantly stronger.
Edit: in that situation, of course.
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Well, I based the Combo around Jester, because Jester has some more lasting effect than Sea Hag.
If Curses are gone, your Sea Hags are dead cards, but Jester, like Mountebank, still gives $2.
Jester is especially nice if there are a lot of good non-terminals. Grand Market is especially nice to copy since it's hard to get it regularly.
This (besides the +$2) makes it better than Smugglers, because you can somewhat control what's on your opponent's deck, but you can't control what he buys.
However, I would still like to see a good article about Jester which takes these effects in consideration.