Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Puzzles and Challenges => Topic started by: RobF on July 19, 2011, 10:02:30 pm
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You have a single card in your hand, no other cards in your deck or discard pile, and no durations in play or cards on your Native Village matt. How many VPs can you gain on this turn?
Edit: As mentioned later, I meant this to describe your hand at the start of your turn, not that you have played some cards from your hand already this turn.
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I'm gonna assume that card can't be Possession ;-)
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You have a Trade Route in your hand. The following cards are in the Kingdom, and have all been bought:
Great Hall, Vineyards, Gardens, Duke, Nobles, Harem, Fairgrounds, Colony, and the three usual Victory piles.
You play the Trade Route and buy a Colony for 10 points.
ETA: You probably want to also buy a Copper, so you don't have to trash that Colony next turn. :P
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You just played a MONSTER hand composed entirely of King's Courted Bridges, Workers' Villages, and Goons. It is now your buy phase and you play the 1 copper in your hand. You buy ALL THE POINTS!
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You have a Trade Route in your hand. The following cards are in the Kingdom, and have all been bought:
Great Hall, Vineyards, Gardens, Duke, Nobles, Harem, Fairgrounds, Colony, and the three usual Victory piles.
You play the Trade Route and buy a Colony for 10 points.
ETA: You probably want to also buy a Copper, so you don't have to trash that Colony next turn. :P
You should include island, have seven islands set aside with seven vineyards, use the trade route to buy the last island and a province. The island is your 9th action, which nets you 7 points, plus 2 from the island plus 6 from the province makes 15. But even better than that is to have twelve islands set aside with twelve duchies, and then you trade route and buy two dukes, giving you 24 points.
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Add appropriate number of Gardens and/or Fairgrounds and filler cards to your Island mat too, because hey you can KC Islands and set aside 3 other cards per Island.
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I think we'd better assume that there are no cards in play otherwise we are essentially looking at the maximum score from any Dominion hand.
Even with this restriction you could already have played 10 mining villages and 10 embargoes this turn, all trashed when played. This gives 40 coins to spend but no extra buys.
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At the start of your turn You have a single card in your hand, no other cards in your deck or discard pile, and no durations in play or cards on your Native Village matt. How many VPs can you gain on this turn?
My addition is in bold. This is clearly what RobF meant but people on the internet seem to take everything literally all the time just to make themselves feel superior... or something. I don't even know why people do it but they do. Anyway, from now on, solve the puzzle in the quote.
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Extending chwhite and WW:
The board is a Colony board with all 8 of the VP kingdom cards, and Black Market (and one other). The BM deck contains Trade Route and King's Court at the least. The game has 3 players: you and two extremely bad AIs that seem to purchase nothing. You have bought out the Islands, used a KC from the BM deck with each Island, and meticulously set aside 36 cards--26 single unique cards from the BM deck and the board, 10 Gardens, and 12 Islands; none of the cards is a Fairgrounds or a Trade Route. Your mat contains, therefore, 28 total unique cards, and 48 cards total.
In your hand is a single Trade Route (29th unique card, 49th total). When you play it, you get $12 to spend and an extra buy. You purchase two Fairgrounds. This gives you 30 unique cards, making each Fairground worth 12 points--a 24 VP gain. It also gives you 51 total cards, increasing the value of each Gardens by 1 VP, for 10 VP. Total VP gain: 34 VP.
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Thisisnotasmile - thank you, yes I did intend the puzzle as you describe to be at the start of your turn. OP edited to reflect this.
Kirian had the basic idea I was thinking about for this puzzle. Here's a hint for my initial solution, but it clearly can be improved:
HINT only: Island, at least 20 VP gain
Detailed but not optimal solution:
Here's a solution with +24.
Your hand is a Forge, you play it to gain a copper.
Earlier using 7 KC'ed Islands, you set aside 21 cards: 8 gardens, 8 fairgrounds, and 5 other unique cards, and all of these currently are neither in your deck nor discard pile. (the KC's were trashed with the Forge at some point)
At present, the set-aside cards amount to 28 total cards and 8 unique ones (+1 to each counting the Forge in hand). After you play the Forge to gain a copper, your deck will go from 29->30 total cards (8 point gain from gardens), and from 9->10 unique cards (16 point gain from the fairgrounds).
Thoughts on improving this:
I play too much 2-player, so I didn't design the above solution with more than 8 of each green card. You can probably do better along similar lines with an Ironworks or Trade Route to get a big Garden/Fairgrounds (maybe still buying a copper), but it's more contrived how your deck would end up in that state and the math on gardens/fairgrounds is hard enough as is. :)
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My addition is in bold. This is clearly what RobF meant but people on the internet seem to take everything literally all the time just to make themselves feel superior... or something. I don't even know why people do it but they do. Anyway, from now on, solve the puzzle in the quote.
Of course it is absolutely clear that he meant start of the turn, but when mentioning "no native village mat" he didn't forget about the island mat. The whole trick in these puzzles is to take them literally and look for the little holes that you are allowed to use and not jump to the first obvious "Oh I have one card, so that can at most be a Platinum, so a Duchy is the best I can purchase"-"solution".
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There's a difference between "Hey, I'm allowed to have some stuff on my Island mat so I'll abuse this fact" and "Hey, it doesn't say when I have 1 card in my hand so therefore I can do absolutely anything that could ever be done in a game of Dominion ever". The former is a puzzle. The latter is reading things too literally when it is obvious what was actually meant simply to make yourself feel superior because you noticed a slight flaw in wording which removes all constraints from the puzzle thus making totally uninteresting and pointless.
The best you can do with 1 card in hand at the beginning of your turn is not "play Platinum, buy Duchy". However, the worst you could do with 1 card in your hand at some point during your turn will probably involve buying every single victory card left for purchase. That is not an interesting puzzle.
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Puzzles like this are about abusing technicalities (massive Island mat). If somebody points out a particular abuse that makes the puzzle a little more boring than the OP intended (Possession), they can clarify the puzzle, and nobody's day is ruined or anything. Clarifications will help to focus further readers on the meat of the puzzle rather than wasting time on unintended abuses, and what constitutes an obvious/unintended abuse vs. an interesting abuse that gets at the heart of the puzzle will not always be as obvious to everyone as it might be to you.
edit: moderating my argument somewhat...
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3-player game, your island mat contains 12 Islands, 11 Dukes, 9 Gardens, 12 Fairgrounds, and 4 other unique cards that are not Trade Route or Duchy, and you have a Trade Route in hand. So that makes 49 cards, 9 uniques. You play your Trade Route and buy 2 Duchies. This scores: +6 (Duchies themselves), +9 (Gardens), +22 (Dukes), +24 (Fairgrounds), for a total of +61VP.
I would have liked to have another Duke and one less Garden, but that would have run out the game on piles. You can get around this in a 5-player game I think, but I'm not sure of the rules there.
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Maybe I'm missing something, but why is Island even being considered? The riddle asks for the most VPs you can gain in this turn. You don't use Islands to gain VPs.
I suppose one could argue that when the game ends, you "gain" all those VPs you stored on the Island mat, but that's not really during your turn.
Or is there something about the riddle that I'm just not interpreting correctly?
Edit: Added spoiler tag since the point is not as moot as I thought it was.
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If I already have a Duchy, then when I buy a duke, I gain an extra point. If I don't, I don't. So it's about making those cards you buy worth more.
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The point is you have no cards in your deck BUT you already have stuff stored on islands. So, for example, if you have 4 gardens stored on 4 islands + the 1 card that you have in your hand already, you are due to score 0 (9-card gardens) + 8 (islands) at the end of the game. If you then use this turn to buy/gain a single card that puts you up to 4 (10-card gardens) + 8 (islands) at the end of the game. That's an increase of 4 points this turn. The islands don't count for points gained this turn because you already had them, but your gardens are scoring more than they would otherwise have scored, so they count.
(ninja'd but posting anyway)
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If I already have a Duchy, then when I buy a duke, I gain an extra point. If I don't, I don't. So it's about making those cards you buy worth more.
Ah, good point, both of you. I only saw the action of Island and didn't think about how you could gain points with a specific Garden/Duke/etc.
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3-player game, your island mat contains 12 Islands, 11 Dukes, 9 Gardens, 12 Fairgrounds, and 4 other unique cards that are not Trade Route or Duchy, and you have a Trade Route in hand. So that makes 49 cards, 9 uniques. You play your Trade Route and buy 2 Duchies. This scores: +6 (Duchies themselves), +9 (Gardens), +22 (Dukes), +24 (Fairgrounds), for a total of +61VP.
I would have liked to have another Duke and one less Garden, but that would have run out the game on piles. You can get around this in a 5-player game I think, but I'm not sure of the rules there.
I think it's going to be tough to top that. Great setup!