Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion Articles => Topic started by: valleg619 on November 16, 2012, 01:43:36 am

Title: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: valleg619 on November 16, 2012, 01:43:36 am
I'm not the best at writing articles so I'll more or less write how this works.



Essentially you start with a Talisman / Sage with a 4/3 beginning.

Sage lets you sift through your deck of copper and estates and get to your talisman immediately. You then buy more talismans.
You can start to get 2-3 talismans in a hand and buy 2-3 sages in a turn. Once the sage / talisman piles are dwindling, start buying gardens.

If your opponent realizes what you're doing (which shouldn't take too long) they may start buying gardens, but you should have enough talismans/sages to get at least 4 every turn to buy gardens and match him.

You can end the game soon afterword by buying out the sage pile. Since they wasted turns getting gardens, they probably don't have many VP, and your talisman spam got you a large lead in cards to get the gardens VP up.



Any thoughts?
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: aaron0013 on November 16, 2012, 07:41:42 am
Welcome to the forum, village619! Be sure to check out great expectation's FAQ and the meme thread.

This does sound great at first glance, and Sage's ability for grabbing your important low-cost card is definitely used here. However you made a very common mistake. Talisman cannot gain multiple gardens :'(  I did something similar to this a while back and messed up the whole game because I forgot about that little clause on Talisman about not gaining victory cards.

It is a great idea though!
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: Powerman on November 16, 2012, 08:14:07 am
Welcome to the forum, village619! Be sure to check out great expectation's FAQ and the meme thread.

This does sound great at first glance, and Sage's ability for grabbing your important low-cost card is definitely used here. However you made a very common mistake. Talisman cannot gain multiple gardens :'(  I did something similar to this a while back and messed up the whole game because I forgot about that little clause on Talisman about not gaining victory cards.

It is a great idea though!

He doesn't say you can!  He says you will consistently be able to get 4 every turn and buy a gardens.  Which in fact, is perfectly legal!
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: WheresMyElephant on November 16, 2012, 08:38:35 am
It's a fun combo, but I doubt anyone will write it up as an article unless you can draw some more generally applicable lessons from it. Nobody really writes articles on specific three-card combos anymore; there are so many cards out these days that the reader expects rarely or perhaps never see this situation.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: ftl on November 16, 2012, 04:10:12 pm
Well, Talisman/Gardens is definitely a thing, and Sage seems like it would work great to add to that.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: timchen on November 16, 2012, 07:17:29 pm
Talisman/Gardens is a thing?
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: ftl on November 16, 2012, 07:56:49 pm
I think so? I mean, you can get oodles of cards really quickly with Talisman. You can't gain multiple gardens with it, but it can run down piles superfast, still works with gardens.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: aaron0013 on November 16, 2012, 10:15:31 pm
Welcome to the forum, village619! Be sure to check out great expectation's FAQ and the meme thread.

This does sound great at first glance, and Sage's ability for grabbing your important low-cost card is definitely used here. However you made a very common mistake. Talisman cannot gain multiple gardens :'(  I did something similar to this a while back and messed up the whole game because I forgot about that little clause on Talisman about not gaining victory cards.

It is a great idea though!

He doesn't say you can!  He says you will consistently be able to get 4 every turn and buy a gardens.  Which in fact, is perfectly legal!

How else are you going to get 4 Gardens a turn with just Sages and Talismans...
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: Powerman on November 16, 2012, 10:42:47 pm
Welcome to the forum, village619! Be sure to check out great expectation's FAQ and the meme thread.

This does sound great at first glance, and Sage's ability for grabbing your important low-cost card is definitely used here. However you made a very common mistake. Talisman cannot gain multiple gardens :'(  I did something similar to this a while back and messed up the whole game because I forgot about that little clause on Talisman about not gaining victory cards.

It is a great idea though!

He doesn't say you can!  He says you will consistently be able to get 4 every turn and buy a gardens.  Which in fact, is perfectly legal!

How else are you going to get 4 Gardens a turn with just Sages and Talismans...

You're getting 1 Gardens a turn by spending 4 coins.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: aaron0013 on November 17, 2012, 08:59:55 am
Unless you get super lucky, there's not much chance of catching up to him in a Gardens race if you are taking the time to almost drain the Talismans and Sages. Furthermore with no +buy or gainer it will take 8 turns to drain the Gardens, giving your opponent enough time to grab a couple Provinces and steal the win if he isn't going for Gardens.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: enquerencia on November 17, 2012, 09:09:54 am
I think the thing he's trying to say is that when you start seeing hands with more than one Talisman, and you're draining the sage and Talisman piles very quickly, a surprise shift into buying Gardens wouldn't be hard and could catch your opponent in a situation where they start greening too early and muddy their deck.  The Sages would catch your Gardens though, and you'd suffer as well.

It might not be an "always go for this combo when these three cards are in the Kingdom" thing, but it's an idea to consider, I think. 

There's probably going to be a faster way out there, but

say it with me

it depends on the kingdom!
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: aaron0013 on November 17, 2012, 09:45:02 am
I think the thing he's trying to say is that when you start seeing hands with more than one Talisman, and you're draining the sage and Talisman piles very quickly, a surprise shift into buying Gardens wouldn't be hard and could catch your opponent in a situation where they start greening too early and muddy their deck.  The Sages would catch your Gardens though, and you'd suffer as well.

It might not be an "always go for this combo when these three cards are in the Kingdom" thing, but it's an idea to consider, I think. 

There's probably going to be a faster way out there, but

say it with me

it depends on the kingdom!

Yeah, I guess that is possible, but if I saw someone open with Talisman and start to take out 2 piles, and there was Gardens on the board, I would know something was up. I could probably just go for BM and beat him with Provinces before he could get all the Gardens.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: gamesou on November 26, 2013, 08:06:05 am
Not sure about Gardens, but Sage/Talisman is an interesting opening. Especially with Peddler on the board.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: markusin on November 26, 2013, 09:07:27 am
I suspect Talisman/Sage could also work great with Vineyard with some cheap actions on the board (Talisman is only worth as much as Copper, after all). You can still use Talisman to get multiple potions, and sage skips over vineyard. Especially awesome if there is a source of +buy on the board for getting vineyards while getting other actions too.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: Davio on November 26, 2013, 09:34:35 am
I suspect Talisman/Sage could also work great with Vineyard with some cheap actions on the board (Talisman is only worth as much as Copper, after all). You can still use Talisman to get multiple potions, and sage skips over vineyard. Especially awesome if there is a source of +buy on the board for getting vineyards while getting other actions too.
Pawn/Hamlet/Squire/Candlestick Maker?

All of those $2's have +Buy.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: markusin on November 26, 2013, 09:59:10 am
I suspect Talisman/Sage could also work great with Vineyard with some cheap actions on the board (Talisman is only worth as much as Copper, after all). You can still use Talisman to get multiple potions, and sage skips over vineyard. Especially awesome if there is a source of +buy on the board for getting vineyards while getting other actions too.
Pawn/Hamlet/Squire/Candlestick Maker?

All of those $2's have +Buy.
Yup. Of course, at that point half the board is feeding the alt-vp strategy. For some reason, the first +buy card to come into my head was Market Square.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: PK9 on November 26, 2014, 05:58:18 pm
Unless you get super lucky, there's not much chance of catching up to him in a Gardens race if you are taking the time to almost drain the Talismans and Sages. Furthermore with no +buy or gainer it will take 8 turns to drain the Gardens, giving your opponent enough time to grab a couple Provinces and steal the win if he isn't going for Gardens.

Ah, but you wouldn't be the one doing the "catching up".    Your Talismans are gaining multiple cards a turn so your VP per Gardens would quickly increase beyond your opponent's.  If he's buying Gardens to keep them away from you, then he's clogging his deck with lower value green cards (if he were going Gardens as the primary strategy, he'd probably be grabbing Talismans too, so it'd be a mirror game and strategy discussion is moot).    And if he manages to "grab a couple of Provinces" it won't be enough to match your stack of 4+ VP Gardens.  And the longer he tries to extend the game to get more Provinces, the more valuable your Gardens become.  Done right, it becomes a race that he will never be able to win, even if he gets all 8 Provinces.


Sage opening is helpful, but I wouldn't worry too much about massing Sages unless you have a $3 turn, which should be rare with a 9/3 treasure/green ratio after your first shuffle (I'm counting the Sage as a Talisman, since that's the only thing that it would draw at that point). 

The complicated thing with Talisman is when do you pass up multiple cards to get a Gardens?  It's a tough choice when you draw four Talismans in the same hand to sacrifice four extra cards just to buy the Gardens, but if you empty stacks too quickly, the game could end while you only hold a couple of 4-5 VP Gardens.   As a general rule, once I start greening, I buy Gardens with 0 or 1 Talismans in hand, and other cards with 2+. 

Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: silverspawn on November 26, 2014, 06:17:46 pm
what is this necro? talisman/gardens is not a thing. it's exponentially worse than any other workshop gardens rush, even armory, and they're not even very good.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: liopoil on November 26, 2014, 06:43:47 pm
sage/talisman sounds like a fairly good opening though. Well, sage/4-cost you want to play is a good opening...
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: Amac on November 26, 2014, 06:50:20 pm
I don't see this. Sage/Talisman is pretty good to get a load of decent cards while skipping over junk I guess, but I don't see gardens being good enough in such a slog... most of the times.

I'll just stick with Squire, Beggar... or even Workshop.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: qdread on November 26, 2014, 08:18:58 pm
Well I think the Talisman/Sage/Vineyard idea is tons better (if you ever get that 3-card combo)... Sage will skip the vineyard, find the potion, and Talisman will help accumulate a lot of cheap junk.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: werothegreat on November 30, 2014, 09:31:19 pm
This thread.  Has been necro'd twice.  And all the posts have been in November.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: liopoil on November 30, 2014, 09:37:19 pm
This thread.  Has been necro'd twice.  And all the posts have been in November.
both necro's on the 26th!
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: Awaclus on November 30, 2014, 09:37:35 pm
This thread.  Has been necro'd twice.  And all the posts have been in November.
Except these two. three.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: liopoil on November 30, 2014, 09:39:02 pm
This thread.  Has been necro'd twice.  And all the posts have been in November.
Except these two. three.
Only in your timezone, here it's still November.
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: werothegreat on November 30, 2014, 09:47:16 pm
This thread.  Has been necro'd twice.  And all the posts have been in November.
Except these two. three.

I'M SPEAKING TO YOU FROM BEYOND THE MIDNIGHT BORDER
Title: Re: Combo: Sage \ Talisman \ Gardens
Post by: Awaclus on December 01, 2014, 08:50:08 am
This thread.  Has been necro'd twice.  And all the posts have been in November.
Except these two. three.
Only in your timezone, here it's still November.
It was already December in at least 14 other timezones as well.