Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: carstimon on August 08, 2012, 03:42:53 pm

Title: Ambassador and trade route
Post by: carstimon on August 08, 2012, 03:42:53 pm
Trade route is an interesting answer to an opponent doing heavy ambassador.  Here's two games.  (Disclaimer: the duke/duchy one I'm not sure I woulda won if my opponent had fought over the duchies earlier.  But I think I should've bought less farming village.)
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120621-164549-e59b2698.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201208/08/game-20120808-122829-4d48cebc.html

The way it works is you get an early trade route and generally prefer trade routes to silver.  You'll have a bloated deck so you want a lot.  They're immediately worth at least $1 because your opponent ambassadors an estate.  You want more victory cards on the board than just estate/duchy/province so that you can get it to $2 for a good reason.  You probably won't have trouble finding something to trade route.

Of course, you need the right support.  I wouldn't want to do this on a board with wharfs and fishing village and goons.  Be smart.  But if there's not really a great reason for a thin deck, consider this.
Title: Re: Ambassador and trade route
Post by: PigFiend on August 08, 2012, 08:34:26 pm
It's definitely food for thought. Too bad that both examples have opponents slowed by an unfavourable 5/2 opening. I also find their pursuit of picking up a Curse to return it to be a little questionable for the flows of those games.
Ambassador is my least favourite card in the game, so I'm glad to see this as a plausible counter-strategy.
Title: Re: Ambassador and trade route
Post by: carstimon on August 08, 2012, 09:12:53 pm
You're right about the opening.  You're definitely right about the curse as well.  It doesn't make sense if there's no draw:
-When you return a curse, you're spending 2 cards on an attack.  You can't afford that if you don't have draw.
-If my deck is already bloated and your deck is sleek, the "dead card" part of the curse is hurting you as much as it's hurting me, even if you only have 1 and I have 6.