Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion Articles => Topic started by: Compynerd255 on September 11, 2013, 02:12:53 pm
-
I know that there's a lot of discussion about Baker's Coin Token ability on the forums, but the wiki article (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Baker) does not yet have a strategy article on Baker. Do you think that someone who's played with Baker a lot could try writing one?
My main thought for such an article is that the most powerful aspect of Baker is it's extra Coin token. If used in the opening, it can turn a 5/2 into a 5/3 or 6/2, or a 4/3 into a 5/3 or 4/4. This permits a lot of new, powerful (almost broken, in some cases) openings:
6/2
- Chapel / Gold (Chapel / Silver on steroids)
- Goons
- Border Village
5/3
- Ensure purchase of $5 card on opening buy (chance does not decide whether you are stuck without the Witch)
- $5 curser / $3 cantrip
- Lab / Silver (or other $3)
- Scheme / $5 action to scheme
4/4
- Double Treasure Map
- DoubleJack
I haven't looked into what strategies you can take by saving the Coin Token - probably the same as other cards that grant them.
-
For BM strategies (like double-jack) I suspect it's better to save the coin token either until you hit $5 when you wanted Gold, or $7 when you wanted Province. Two JOATs in a deck of 12 cards seems like you'd have about even chance of collision.
-
The baker is extremely simple but coin token strategy is extremely complicated. It would be possible to write an article on coin tokens but the spending of coin tokens will still frequently depend upon turn by turn value judgements for the kingdom cards.
-
For BM strategies (like double-jack) I suspect it's better to save the coin token either until you hit $5 when you wanted Gold, or $7 when you wanted Province. Two JOATs in a deck of 12 cards seems like you'd have about even chance of collision.
That's a good point - I would want JOAT, but probably not two JOAT. Baker/Treasure Map seems like a pretty dang good combo, though, as does Baker/Chapel with a 5/2 split.
The baker is extremely simple but coin token strategy is extremely complicated. It would be possible to write an article on coin tokens but the spending of coin tokens will still frequently depend upon turn by turn value judgments for the kingdom cards.
Do you still think that the extra coin token available on the opening buy is worth discussing, or would that be part of general coin token strategy?
-
I'm pretty sure Treasure Map/Treasure Map is a poor opening.
You have like a 30% chance of collision, and a 70% chance of wasted opening buys. Maybe it's good in 4p.
-
I'm pretty sure Treasure Map/Treasure Map is a poor opening.
You have like a 30% chance of collision, and a 70% chance of wasted opening buys. Maybe it's good in 4p.
You don't need the TMs to collide on the first cycle for it to be good. Second cycle collision still makes it good.
Edit: A quick simulation: Opening TM+TM then playing BM wins around 57/40 against BM opening Silver+Silver. So obviously it's going to depend on the board whether TM/TM is typically going to be good or not, but that's not too shabby as a basemark.
-
I think in general you definitely want to use your initial Coin token, rather than saving it. How you use it for your opening will, naturally, depend on the constitutional nationstate in question.
-
I think in general you definitely want to use your initial Coin token, rather than saving it. How you use it for your opening will, naturally, depend on the constitutional nationstate in question.
Except for Familiar boards, you might want to open Potion/$3 and save your token in case a 2P hand happens.
-
I think in general you definitely want to use your initial Coin token, rather than saving it. How you use it for your opening will, naturally, depend on the constitutional nationstate in question.
Except for Familiar boards, you might want to open Potion/$3 and save your token in case a 2P hand happens.
I dunno. Potion/Potion could lead to double Familiars...
-
I think in general you definitely want to use your initial Coin token, rather than saving it. How you use it for your opening will, naturally, depend on the constitutional nationstate in question.
Except for Familiar boards, you might want to open Potion/$3 and save your token in case a 2P hand happens.
I dunno. Potion/Potion could lead to double Familiars...
Or two Potions and three Estates in your hand.
-
I think in general you definitely want to use your initial Coin token, rather than saving it. How you use it for your opening will, naturally, depend on the constitutional nationstate in question.
Except for Familiar boards, you might want to open Potion/$3 and save your token in case a 2P hand happens.
I dunno. Potion/Potion could lead to double Familiars...
Or two Potions and three Estates in your hand.
Is that any worse than Potion/Silver/Estate/Estate/Estate in a Familiar game?
-
I think in general you definitely want to use your initial Coin token, rather than saving it. How you use it for your opening will, naturally, depend on the constitutional nationstate in question.
Except for Familiar boards, you might want to open Potion/$3 and save your token in case a 2P hand happens.
I dunno. Potion/Potion could lead to double Familiars...
Or two Potions and three Estates in your hand.
Is that any worse than Potion/Silver/Estate/Estate/Estate in a Familiar game?
There might be Scrying Pool. Or Poor House. Or really anything that costs less than $3.
-
I think you want to be spending the extra Coin in the opening a LOT. That's just because of the cascading nature of Dominion where early advantages carry on a long way. The value of coins diminishes towards the middle game, because adding 1 component to 10 isn't nearly as critical as adding 1 component to 1 other. In the end, the value of coin tokens increases again because Colonies/Provinces are waaay better than Duchies/Estates (barring obvious exceptions).
Overall, the on-play of Baker is comparable to Market, quite a bit worse throughout the crucial middle game (missing the +Buy is hurtful) and a bit better in the end game.
-
Your opening buys are often less about buying your keys cards, and more about building the scaffold to reach those key cards. That opening coin token is sometimes enough to significantly bypass that scaffold and go right for some key cards.
-
I think in general you definitely want to use your initial Coin token, rather than saving it. How you use it for your opening will, naturally, depend on the constitutional nationstate in question.
Except for Familiar boards, you might want to open Potion/$3 and save your token in case a 2P hand happens.
I dunno. Potion/Potion could lead to double Familiars...
Or two Potions and three Estates in your hand.
Is that any worse than Potion/Silver/Estate/Estate/Estate in a Familiar game?
Yeah, because if you've got Potion/Silver/Estate/Estate/Estate on a Baker board, you'll still be able to get that Familiar, because you didn't have to use your token to open Potion/Silver.
-
Anecdotal evidence has told me that when I ignore Baker, I usually lose.
-
Do you still think that the extra coin token available for the opening buy is worth discussing, or would that be part of general coin token strategy?
I think it's just way too big of a subject to do any justice to it with a single article (and Baker games are too rare to write the enormous series of articles that would be required.)
To name a similar situation, you couldn't ever really write a single article about how to choose the best opening when you have a 4/3 split. Aside from a few basic opening principles like "trashing is good," this topic belongs to the hundreds of individual card articles and individual Kingdom breakdowns and so forth. How to deal with the Baker coin is basically the same question, except three times as huge: "How do I choose the best opening out of all the available 4/4 and 5/3 openings, plus the 4/3 openings with a bonus Coin token saved for later?" Even if the writer had as much experience playing 5/3 openings as 4/3 openings, which they don't, where would they start?
-
Do you still think that the extra coin token available for the opening buy is worth discussing, or would that be part of general coin token strategy?
I think it's just way too big of a subject to do any justice to it with a single article (and Baker games are too rare to write the enormous series of articles that would be required.)
To name a similar situation, you couldn't ever really write a single article about how to choose the best opening when you have a 4/3 split. Aside from a few basic opening principles like "trashing is good," this topic belongs to the hundreds of individual card articles and individual Kingdom breakdowns and so forth. How to deal with the Baker coin is basically the same question, except three times as huge: "How do I choose the best opening out of all the available 4/4 and 5/3 openings, plus the 4/3 openings with a bonus Coin token saved for later?" Even if the writer had as much experience playing 5/3 openings as 4/3 openings, which they don't, where would they start?
Fair enough - openings are far too wide a topic to be covered in a single article. I just think that if we did want to say anything about openings, the most appropriate place would be a Baker article, since that's the only time that comes up. And while you can't cover the subject in depth, you can say some general things:
- If you get a 5/2, you can now get a $6 as an opening buy.
- You're now guaranteed a $5 in the opening, no matter what. That's really good if that $5 happens to be a curser.
If you want to cite more specific examples, we could write those as combo articles. For instance, the Treasure Map / Baker combo article is definitely worth writing about, because the only reason Donald X. priced TM at $4 is so you couldn't ever open double TM - but now, with the Baker, you sure can!
-
Here is the Treasure Map/Baker combo article:
With the coin token from Baker, you are able to open TM/TM from a 3/4 opening. This is still not that great an opening. However, if you are up against a much better player, you may luck into a dominating position. Jackpot! ;)
(Seriously though: maybe it's worth opening in some situations with mroe than 2p, where high risk high reward is pretty good, and also in cases where TM is already decent, e.g. with Warehouse.)
-
Here is the Treasure Map/Baker combo article:
With the coin token from Baker, you are able to open TM/TM from a 3/4 opening. This is still not that great an opening. However, if you are up against a much better player, you may luck into a dominating position. Jackpot! ;)
(Seriously though: maybe it's worth opening in some situations with mroe than 2p, where high risk high reward is pretty good, and also in cases where TM is already decent, e.g. with Warehouse.)
I think the best enabler for TM is TR-Armory. But that does in itself involve finagling the collision of two $4 cards.
-
The best enabler for TM is probably Chapel/Ironworks.
-
The best enabler for Treasure Map is another Treasure map.
-
The best enabler for Treasure Map is another Treasure map.
Solid Gold.
-
Spending $6 on a Stonemason with Watchtower or Royal Seal.
-
A key $6 card (mainly thinking Goons here, maybe Altar too since trash->Baker is very appealing) is a reason not to spend the initial token on T1/T2 if you had a 4/3 split to begin with. It's pretty rare to hit $6 on T3/T4, but hitting $5 is normal, so that token is likely to get you the Goons when you wouldn't have otherwise.
-
The best enabler for Treasure Map is another Treasure map.
Solid Gold.
4 of them, in fact!
-
I actually played two different Baker games today. The first one, I saved the token to open double Urchin, and then pick up a Tactician on a $4, and lost. It took forever for my Urchins to collide. The second one, I think I spent the token immediately on a Baker, and rigged up a KC-Baker thing that allowed me to get lots of Coin tokens every turn, and thus guaranteeing I buy a Province every turn. Would have been much better with +Buy... I think I only won because my opponent (who went for Ventures instead) flubbed a turn. He resigned.
-
A key $6 card (mainly thinking Goons here, maybe Altar too since trash->Baker is very appealing) is a reason not to spend the initial token on T1/T2 if you had a 4/3 split to begin with. It's pretty rare to hit $6 on T3/T4, but hitting $5 is normal, so that token is likely to get you the Goons when you wouldn't have otherwise.
Though it's much less rare to hit $6 on T3/T4 if you opened 5/3.
-
The best enabler for Treasure Map is another Treasure map.
Solid Gold.
4 of them, in fact!
Good job, you explained the joke! :P
-
A key $6 card (mainly thinking Goons here, maybe Altar too since trash->Baker is very appealing) is a reason not to spend the initial token on T1/T2 if you had a 4/3 split to begin with. It's pretty rare to hit $6 on T3/T4, but hitting $5 is normal, so that token is likely to get you the Goons when you wouldn't have otherwise.
Though it's much less rare to hit $6 on T3/T4 if you opened 5/3.
Ehhh depends on the kingdom obviously, but the $5's that are excellent at hitting $6 also have a penalty (Vault, Embassy), as do the terminal Golds (Mandarin, Count). So on T3/T4, whatever $5 is available might not help you that much more than a Silver as far as hitting $6 goes, unless you're willing to pay some sort of penalty.
-
I have a question on Baker for you experts... I see a lot of people buying Baker on T1 or T2 with the extra coin token. I usually find this isn't a great plan since Baker cannot guarantee you getting to $5 again on the first reshuffle. So it seems to me that it ends up slowing you down to immediately buy a Baker, and that it's usually better to get another $5 card, or save the coin token to get Gold. What are people's thoughts on this?
-
I have a question on Baker for you experts... I see a lot of people buying Baker on T1 or T2 with the extra coin token. I usually find this isn't a great plan since Baker cannot guarantee you getting to $5 again on the first reshuffle. So it seems to me that it ends up slowing you down to immediately buy a Baker, and that it's usually better to get another $5 card, or save the coin token to get Gold. What are people's thoughts on this?
I think the general idea is to get Bakers early to rack up a lot of coin tokens. It could be good in certain kingdoms, but otherwise you may be right that other options are usually better if you can live without the coin tokens.
-
I've spent the coin token to open Baker on 4/3, on a whim. I see what you mean when you say this isn't a great plan, because you spend a coin token to get a card that gives you the coin token back sometime during your second shuffle. Tying up your free coin token for an extra cantrip during your second shuffle? The benefits of spending the coin token to open Baker seems marginal when you put it that way.
I can tell you about a game I just played where I did that though. It was was a Goons game where the only way to play more than 1 terminal a turn was with necropolis, and my opponent was able to open Goons/nothing. I opened Baker/Forager because who knew when I would be able to get to $6 if I had to worry about Goons so early, and I was firm about not getting any terminals besides Goons. It was still a good game for a green-less Goons deck due to the presence of Sage, and Wishing Well was there too.
Sorry for the anecdote, but it's an example of the thin-deck rationale can could be used to justify such a move, even if it wasn't the correct play at all.
Of course, opening Baker without spending any coin tokens is a different story. Then we're talking about 2 coin tokens during the second shuffle, which can really help you get to 5$ or whatever more consistently.
-
I would say that, as always, it depends on the board. If there is a key $6 like Goons, you should seriously consider saving the coin token. If there is another key $5, why not use the coin token and get that card immediately? And if there isn't such a card, you have to decide whether you want a Baker or if you'd rather save the coin token for an early Gold. Baker may itself be a key card anyway, and it's better to have it earlier than later.
-
Just to come back on this, but if hitting a key $6 is what you're after, then opening Baker/($3 cost) is effectively opening ($3 cost)/nothing just to save the coin token as far as the second shuffle is concerned. And that's assuming Baker lands into your turn 3 hand. If it lands in your turn 5 hand, then you opened ($3 cost)/nothing
with
-
Just to come back on this, but if hitting a key $6 is what you're after, then opening Baker/($3 cost) is effectively opening ($3 cost)/nothing just to save the coin token as far as the second shuffle is concerned. And that's assuming Baker lands into your turn 3 hand. If it lands in your turn 5 hand, then you opened ($3 cost)/nothing with
Thanks for the input on this topic. I guess it comes back to the old canard that it depends on the kingdom. After all Baker is a good 5 that can probably be considered "key" in many cases, so I understand picking one up on T1 or T2. However, I think that if you get a 4/3 opening you will probably be better off saving the coin token and opening something like Militia/Silver. Then with the coin token, you are very likely to get two $5 cards on the second shuffle, or even a Gold on T3 or T4. By skipping the Baker on the first turn you can probably build a better economy by the third shuffle, if that makes sense.
-
Well, I just had a game where getting a Baker on the first shuffle was a very good move. It was a Gardens/Storeroom game. Opening Storeroom/Baker rather than Storeroom/Storeroom made it possible for me to repeatedly hit $5 for Duchies once all the Gardens were gone.
http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20131206/log.50745d1a0cf28ed55d9d6498.1386345850654.txt (http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20131206/log.50745d1a0cf28ed55d9d6498.1386345850654.txt)