Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Game Reports => Help! => Topic started by: zahlman on January 15, 2013, 08:21:32 pm

Title: Is Bureaucrat really that strong of an attack?
Post by: zahlman on January 15, 2013, 08:21:32 pm

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/15/game-20130115-171347-4909bc47.html

I ended up quite slow with a plan to use University to gain Treasury for money, and Trade Route to thin out my deck and a Navigator for sifting. Later on I started gaining TRs because TR-Treasury would give a tiny extra bit of draw, and I figured I had a lot of targets hanging around for TR.

I'd have thought it'd be easy to hit $8 that way, but it seems like I hardly got to use the TRs at all. I got forced into buying Duchies to try to keep up, and my Treasuries were basically Peddlers (which I expected and planned on; and I didn't think it was that expensive to get University to gain those). My opponent went straight Bureaucrat-BM, and ended up not getting a 4th Province until turn 18 even with the help of Venture. So it's really, really frustrating not to be able to beat that.

Title: Re: Is Bureaucrat really that strong of an attack?
Post by: Titandrake on January 15, 2013, 08:36:22 pm

Didn't look at the log that carefully, but I think what happened was that the tempo loss for University didn't pay off with Treasury.

Opening Trade Route/Potion slows you down a lot early on, and buying Victory cards to turn on Trade Route slows you down even more, enough for Bureaucrat-BM to be relevant. (Side note: IIRC Bureaucrat-BM isn't that bad. It's also a lot more resilient to greening, which helps explain the consistent Province buys towards the end).

The engine-ish strategy might work, but I don't think you can neglect treasure as much as you did here. Maybe incorporate Native Village somehow? Helps against Bureaucrat, and combines decently with Navigator to keep Victory cards out of the deck.