Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: teasel on January 22, 2013, 08:53:02 pm
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you'll have to excuse me if this isn't the right section,so anyway i just saw someone making a kingdom that featured every victory card released so far (so that would be a kingdom made of noble,harem,feodum,silk road,island,duke,farmland,fairground,great hall,gardens) and i tought wondering about what's the best way to play such a kingdom would make an interessing discussion... so what would be a good way to go? buy harems and turn them into province with farm lands? abuse silk road and nobles/great hall combination? ignore everything and just go big money?
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Well here's something I never thought of till you suggested it: using Farmland to turn Harems into Province is an awful thing to do. It nets you 6 points, and a card that was essentially a Silver is now dead. Just buying the Province nets you 6 points but doesn't replace a live card with an extra dead one. (inb4 Fairgrounds edge case)
As for your actual question...I dunno. Silk Roads are obviously going to be great later, but it's not exactly a SR rush board. Nobles are probably worthwhile, Islands probably good early. I dunno, I'd probably lose on this board :P
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I would imagine you would want to go SR, but then your opponent can go Duchy/Duke.
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I would imagine you would want to go SR, but then your opponent can go Duchy/Duke.
There's so little support for Duchy/Duke, though. I think I go straight for Silk Roads, and really try to win the split if he fights me. If he doesn't, I sprinkle in some Silvers, too... either way, I'll be buying them, because when my deck is like all Silk Roads, I will have to. Then it's on to Islands/Great Halls.
I don't know, maybe mixing in Islands from the inception would be better.
I doubt you want to focus on anything above the $4 line though. It's gotta be a lot harder here to have the cash to keep hitting $5 over and over again, which is what you need to do for Duchy/Duke. Well, maybe I'm wrong. Harems might make me wrong. Maybe go for Harems and then Duchy/Duke?
Dunno. This is actually a more interesting question than I first supposed.
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I'd open Great Hall / Island. Look to Island away at least 1 or 2 of your starting estates, then start in on Silk Road. Otherwise, you simply will clog too much, and your opponent will just have too many points out there.
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I'd open Great Hall / Island. Look to Island away at least 1 or 2 of your starting estates, then start in on Silk Road. Otherwise, you simply will clog too much, and your opponent will just have too many points out there.
The Island, maybe, yeah. Sounds good. But I think you need a Silver! You're going to need to buy cash. There's no way to play this without buying at least a few Silvers along the road.
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I'd open Great Hall / Island. Look to Island away at least 1 or 2 of your starting estates, then start in on Silk Road. Otherwise, you simply will clog too much, and your opponent will just have too many points out there.
The Island, maybe, yeah. Sounds good. But I think you need a Silver! You're going to need to buy cash. There's no way to play this without buying at least a few Silvers along the road.
But early? You really don't need to hit 5... well, ever. I think winning the GH split 5/3 is more important than an early silver.
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I kind of think Robz is right. You don't need to hit $5, but you do need to hit $4 and an early silver will allow you to do that more consistently. The exception would of course be if Shelters were in play and you trashed your Hovel for a Great Hall. But, I am assuming we are starting with the standard 3 estates.
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I'd open Great Hall / Island. Look to Island away at least 1 or 2 of your starting estates, then start in on Silk Road. Otherwise, you simply will clog too much, and your opponent will just have too many points out there.
The Island, maybe, yeah. Sounds good. But I think you need a Silver! You're going to need to buy cash. There's no way to play this without buying at least a few Silvers along the road.
But early? You really don't need to hit 5... well, ever. I think winning the GH split 5/3 is more important than an early silver.
I'm not sure winning the GH split is that important. If you don't win it, well, there's always Gardens and Islands.
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Yeah, silk road, gardens, island would be a good way to go, pick up silvers as you go along
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i feel like winning the silk road split is most important thing to do. especially when every card you buy is going to be a victory card, other than a couple silvers
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Just played a game on a great silk road board which shows that you nevertheless have to take care not to green too early. http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/30/game-20120130-102233-ab0fe9d8.html
I would have opened silver/Island, and proceeded with Island/SR. The alternative is to win the SR split at all costs, but I mean, your deck only has $7 to begin with and it's only going to get worse unless you do something about it.
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what about a feodum strategy? i just realized you could indeed trash them with farmland
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No Colony, Overgrown Estate, or Dame Josephine?
Edit: And Vineyard wouldn't be as useless as it sounds, with Great Hall, Island, Nobles, Dame Josephine, and Necropolis available.
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No Colony, Overgrown Estate, or Dame Josephine?
Edit: And Vineyard wouldn't be as useless as it sounds, with Great Hall, Island, Nobles, Dame Josephine, and Necropolis available.
Maybe not so useless as it sounds, but still pretty useless ;D
Seriously, the vineyards maybe reach about 3-4 points (and maximum 8 points when you buy all actions available) and you need to get a potion which has the same price as silk road, so you better buy this, as every action card you have is also a victory card (except Necropolis of course).
And don't forget that you never get all the vineyards because beside of Nobles you near the reshuffle just 5 cards a turn and island is the only deck thinner, so you won't see your potion that much.
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I would open SR/Silver and buy two more SRs in the second reshuffle. MAYBE buy nobles if I happen to hit 6. SRs are probably going to be worth 4 VP, maybe even 5 (buying 11 green cards its a must in this setting, and 15 is not impossible if strategies diverge), so winning the split is important. After that, you don't really need GHs that much, buying estates is not much worse, because this is going to be a slog anyway. Gardens are probably going to end up between 2 and 3, without +Buy I don't see they can get to 4 VP each. Still, after SRs are out, I would maybe pickup Silvers on $3, but otherwise take Gardens and Estates and Coppers if I have less than $2. When the 3-pile is near, adapt to the point difference and beware of 3-pile version of PPR and especially, to the point-jump thresholds of SR and maybe Gardens. Not too fun to play, but perfect for simulation.
Caveat: This is missing Tunnels. Having a $3 2VP card changes the mid-game greatly. I think with Tunnles I would probably completely skip Great Halls.
EDIT: Harem is better than Nobles here, because the money density is likely to be less than 0.66 after the 2nd reshuffle for most of the game, so +$2 is better than +3 cards (and +2 actions is of course worthelss).
Also, I want a Crossroads!!!
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Is SR really the way to go here? You don't have any extra buy sources to get green cards fast, or three pile before BM starts hitting their 8. If you can't out rush 'em, you need 8 SR + 8 GH + 4 estates = 17 turns spent buying green cards to counter BMs 8 turns spent buying green cards (tunnels don't help much more than GH, given you can't activate them and the real VP sources is the SR). So the BM player 8 extra turns to build their economy up, which seems like plenty of time.
I'm thinking BM with some islands at the start and maybe a few harem's is probably the way to go.
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I think I'd open Island/Silver and play duchy/duke, maybe with a few silk roads sprinkled in.
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8 turns is not enough economy to buy 8 provinces without stalling. In any case, you may be on to something with Island, which also provides an extra cushin of points to the BM player. Mmm, I don't know, I would like to see a simulation here.
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I would open Silver/Silver (or Silver-nothing) and go for Big Money + (2) Nobles. I would not buy any VP other than Provinces and the two Nobles if the other player was trying to go Silk Road.
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Man, if any set demands some simulations, I think it's this one. I think SR is going to be absolutely essential here, but opening SR sounds crazy, as it allows your opponent to go afer Polk's BM/Nobles suggestion with impunity. I think Island/Silver is going to be the best opening, though; getting some of the green out of your deck early is going to be important for an SR player. Other thoughts:
Feodum is useless without any trashing or silver-gainers.
Vineyard is worth an absolute max of 8 points (with Necropolis available), but getting all those points will be insanely difficult with no +Buy.
Gardens runs into a similar problem without +Buy
Harem is almost certainly better than Nobles for someone going for SR, but Nobles is better for a BM player.
Duchy/Duke has no enablers, and is going to be more of a slog than SR/GH/Estate.
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With no +Buys open Island/Silver. Then any $4-5 hand alternate Silk Road/Island, adjusting to make sure not not lose the Silk Road split. Any $3 Hand alternate Great Hall/Silver. Keep the deck clean by putting the Silk Roads/Estates on the Island. With an even 4/4 spilt on Silk Road/Island you have a clean deck with a Great Halls/Silver/Coppers and 3 other victory cards and are probably close to a 3-pile. The silvers should help the economy so I would: $5-6 buy Duchy, $4 buy Feodum, $3 but Tunnel buying the last Great Hall. FTW at least hoping so.
I played a solitaire game without Feodum awhile back on iso, my hand was so clogged because I was trying to by harems/nobles but not ever hitting six I kept buying duke/duchy and it took forever for me to three pile. But a 2-player games keeping the deck clean would go decently fast. My guess less than 15-17 turns.
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I actually played a game like this awhile ago.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20121209-201437-d51ef93a.html (http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20121209-201437-d51ef93a.html)
Probably far from optimal, but I beat the guy who proposed it :D
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Man, if any set demands some simulations, I think it's this one.
I think it's too adversarial. You want to be buying some islands but you want to rush the key scoring cards as well to deny the opponent. You can't be sure whether your a strategy wants a short or long game. I'd put the silk road/island strategy down as favourite (before and after a play with the simulator) but I wouldn't rule out a duke strategy that denies some silk roads.
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You definitely wouldn't buy Feodum for points in its own right, but if you had a few in deck and bought Farmlands that would help keep your money density up for the other cheap ones (and that would increase your density better than Harem, and maybe even Nobles depending on how bloated your deck already is). I think I'd probably play it Silver/Island, getting a couple more Islands on $4-5 and Silvers on $3 (probably Harem on $6?), then switch to getting a couple of Feodums to trash to Farmlands for Harem + 3xSilver, then try to 3-pile on SR and maybe GH and Estates.
The thing is, you'd be able to counter a Duke/Duchy strategy moderately well by having a moderate heuristic for buying them - normally the comparison is Provinces vs Dukes and as the article points out once you start trying to deny your opponent Duchies while you play Provinces you're half-way to caving in and joining the Duke race, but here Duchies (and even a well-timed Duke buy) are also a useful card for a SR strategy so it's not like you're breaking your strategy that much, and you can potentially even make Duchies your third pile thus ruining the Duke player's momentum.
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Anyone want to do some science on this on iso? It's not like feodum would be worth anything anyways. I want the silk road-side.
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I'd open Great Hall / Island. Look to Island away at least 1 or 2 of your starting estates, then start in on Silk Road. Otherwise, you simply will clog too much, and your opponent will just have too many points out there.
The Island, maybe, yeah. Sounds good. But I think you need a Silver! You're going to need to buy cash. There's no way to play this without buying at least a few Silvers along the road.
yeah. As a general rule of thumb, I try to buy only things that help your deck before the first shuffle.
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You definitely wouldn't buy Feodum for points in its own right, but if you had a few in deck and bought Farmlands that would help keep your money density up for the other cheap ones (and that would increase your density better than Harem, and maybe even Nobles depending on how bloated your deck already is).
OK, I had not thought about Farmland giving Feodum->Harem + 3 Silver. There's probably a strong argument for that. The problem is getting the $6 consistently before this starts giving you a Silver flood.
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It is going to be kinda hard to get a Silver/Feodum deck going on with so little support.
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You definitely wouldn't buy Feodum for points in its own right, but if you had a few in deck and bought Farmlands that would help keep your money density up for the other cheap ones (and that would increase your density better than Harem, and maybe even Nobles depending on how bloated your deck already is).
OK, I had not thought about Farmland giving Feodum->Harem + 3 Silver. There's probably a strong argument for that. The problem is getting the $6 consistently before this starts giving you a Silver flood.
It's a cute idea but I think it would be pretty hard to match up Feodum with a $6 hand in time for it to make a difference.
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Anyone want to do some science on this on iso? It's not like feodum would be worth anything anyways. I want the silk road-side.
I would be up for giving this kingdom a try, sometime.
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Anyone want to do some science on this on iso? It's not like feodum would be worth anything anyways. I want the silk road-side.
I would be up for giving this kingdom a try, sometime.
me too
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I would too.