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26

Game Reports / When to break PPR

« on: November 09, 2013, 04:09:43 am »

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20131109/log.5101a6c4e4b02b7235c3860f.1383987415210.txt

T15.  Oh how I wanted to do it, but no.  "I need to play smarter than that," I said to myself.  My fear was that he had an Embassy and would be able to draw $8 with even the smaller hand.

If I broke PPR on T15, my T16 Province buy would have won it.  All the good luck I had early with three double-FG buys with just one Hamlet, squandered.  Kids, today's lesson is: live dangerously.

27

Game Reports / Is Treasure Map+Talisman a combo?

« on: October 31, 2013, 09:51:37 pm »

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20131031/log.505e9c9c0cf2ef979299a7c0.1383270592328.txt

Did my opponent get really lucky, or is this an actual combo?  I think the former, but I played so badly in this game and have been playing so badly for the past month or so that I don't trust my instincts anymore.

28

GokoDom / Thank you Kirian for organizing Gokodom II

« on: October 25, 2013, 02:47:37 am »

I really enjoyed this tournament and I'm looking forward to the next one, whenever that is.

Kirian, thank you for doing the hard work to make it all happen.  Much appreciated.

29

Dominion General Discussion / "Fixing" Tournament

« on: October 23, 2013, 03:11:37 pm »

A lot of people dislike Tournament, and I am one of them.  But one thing I actually really like about Tournament is how it's very strong in the early game, but gets weaker in the mid and late game as your opponent starts buying Provinces.  So I was thinking of how Tournament could be made less annoying, while keeping that same mechanic.  And I thought, what if you just eliminated the Prizes?  What if Tournament's text was just like this:

+1 Action
Each player may reveal a Province from his hand.  If you do, gain a Duchy.  If no one does, +1 Card and +$1.

It'd still be a great opener.  It would still get weaker in the mid to late game.  But if it gains only Duchies, and doesn't topdeck them, its main function would be more to boost your early economy, and then give you some endgame control with the virtual +Buy.  And the fact that you only get the +1 Card, +$1 bonus if you also do not reveal a Province would make for some interesting tactical decisions in the late game.  I think it would still be interesting, and still be a strong card, but would be way less annoying.  Thoughts?

(Also, apologies if this should have gone in the Variants and Fan Cards section).

EDIT: another idea I had was to make it so Tournament doesn't gain you Prizes, but can be played as a Prize when you reveal a Province, like Band of Misfits.  That way we can keep the shiny Prizes (which are fun to play if you get them!) but effectively give players equal access to them.  The race to win the first Tournament would still be important, but would be less likely to be game-deciding, I think.  And also playing Followers or whatever a lot would require you to build a deck where you can consistently line up Provinces and Tournaments, which takes skill.  More skill than lucking into a key Prize and then just having it in your deck, certainly.

30

Dominion General Discussion / What's the highest value you've ever gotten for Fairgrounds?

« on: August 28, 2013, 01:51:14 pm »

I was just thinking about what the maximum possible value for Fairgrounds is.  I think it's 14 VP, right?
- 10 kingdom cards
- 3 "standard" Victory cards
- 3 "standard" Treasure cards
- Platinum/Colony
- Potion
- Curse
- 5 Ruins
- 5 Prizes
- 3 Shelters
- Spoils
- Madman
- Mercenary

That's 36 cards, so 14-point Fairgrounds is technically possible, but I can't imagine it'd ever happen in a real game.  I've never been able to get more than 8 VP Fairgrounds, anyone been able to do 10 or even 12 though?

31

Game Reports / Rebuild + Feodum

« on: June 11, 2013, 01:51:17 am »

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130610/log.505e9c9c0cf2ef979299a7c0.1370928470714.txt

Feodum seems like a good complement to Rebuild, like that needs anything to enable it.  Rebuilding Feoda into Duchies boosts your other Feoda and your economy so you can buy more Feoda/Duchies.  And when your Estates are gone you can just name Province as hitting either a Duchy or a Feodum helps you.  And by then you'll have enough Silver to replenish those with your buys.

How essential is Remodel here?  Having a way of gaining Feoda without buying them is very good here obviously and it helps you Rebuild Feoda to Duchies sooner, which is good.  But I don't know how much the combo relies on this.

Man, Rebuild is very strong...

32

Council Room Feedback / You can learn some amazing things from Council Room

« on: March 08, 2013, 04:24:27 pm »

I never used Council Room that extensively, I was mostly interested in just playing the game.  But I've been poking around on my Council Room page more lately because Iso is about to go down, and I've discovered some things that really surprise me:

- the set I have the highest "Favor" rating for is Alchemy, at 2.75%.  I always thought I wasn't that good with Alchemy cards, apparently not!
- the set I have the lowest "Favor" rating for is Seaside, -1.66%.  Seaside is my favorite set, and I thought Durations were a strength of mine.  Apparently they're not.
- I have a career 1-0-0 record against -Stef- (I remember the game I won against him, but I didn't realize that was the only time we'd ever played).  That's pretty gratifying, in a way.
- my second-highest "Win Rate Without" card is Fool's Gold.  Saboteur's first, no surprise there, but I love FG and almost always go for it if it's at all viable, and have won many games with it, so why do I seem to do so well when I don't buy it?  (Also Hamlet's #6 on that list which seems really odd).
- of my top five "Win Rate With" cards, three are Prizes.  The other two are Scout (#4) and Philosopher's Stone (#1).  What the...?!

I don't know what I can take from this, but I was just really amused by how many very surprising things I found about my stats by looking closely at them for the first time.

So, let me just take a minute to say something I've never took the time to say before: thanks to everyone who helped create and maintain Council Room.

33

Dominion Isotropic / Using bots to hack your shuffle luck?!

« on: November 30, 2012, 01:49:08 pm »

I just had an interesting encounter.  I spanked this Adama fellow on an Ambassador board mainly because he played it badly.  I was able to piledrive the Provinces, and just before I bought the last one to end the game we had this little exchange:

10:39 Adama: holy shenanigans batman... nice bot you got there
10:39 jaybeez: wait sorry, what?
10:40 Adama: you.
10:40 Adama: fraud
10:40 jaybeez: I swear I'm made of flesh
10:40 Adama: no way you could've drawn the way you did
10:40 jaybeez: hahaha
10:40 Adama: see ya cheater
10:40 Adama has returned to the lobby

Have there been people in the past who have somehow hacked Iso to give themselves better shuffle luck?  I'm guessing this dude's just a moron, but still, I'm intrigued.

34

Game Reports / Interesting Golden Deck variation

« on: October 02, 2012, 01:01:05 am »

Just finished this game: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201210/01/game-20121001-214534-bbd92588.html

I created a Golden Deck using Fishing Village and Watchtower.  Opened FV/Bishop, and bought a second Bishop before the second reshuffle, and then just trashed all my Coppers and Estates, and one of the Bishops on T11, until I had a deck of 5 FVs, 2 Watchtowers, 1 Silver, 1 Bishop, 1 Province.  I would have all the FVs in play every turn (some from the previous duration).  Playing the FVs allowed me to reduce my handsize to draw the deck with Watchtower(s), then trash the Province with the Bishop, which would give me exactly $8.

I know some people might look at that board and think this is obvious, but I feel like a champ for coming up with it on the spot

(I could have won by more too--I reflexively trashed the Province on the last turn when I should have trashed the superfluous Watchtower).

35

Help! / How did I manage to win this game?

« on: September 28, 2012, 04:37:40 pm »

I just played this game: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201209/28/game-20120928-131821-ea2d82ce.html

Supply:
$6
Border Village

$5
City
Market
Mountebank
Tribute

$4
Horse Traders
Pirate Ship
Tournament
Young Witch

$3
Ambassador (bane)

$2
Pearl Diver

I got 5/2 and my opponent got 4/3.  I figured I was a dead duck with both Ambassador and Tournament on the board.  So I went for Mountebank, figuring that even if the Curses would come back to me, I had to gamble that the attack would slow him down enough for me to pick up an Ambassador before the second reshuffle and try to catch up.

I pulled out a victory, and it wasn't close really: 31-14.  When the game was over he asked, "How did you get your deck to work?"  And I said, "... I'm actually not quite sure!"

So, what do you think I (unknowingly) did right here?  I think a huge part of it actually was the sheer luck that a Tournament game sometimes requires--I bought my first Province on T14, and got the first prize (Followers) on T15.  I mean, that's really, really lucky especially considering he bought his first Province on T9 and had more Tournaments than me, both at the time and at the end of the game.

But anyway, I can only see four apparent reasons why I was able to win:
- my Mountebank gamble did seem to pay off--I think I did slow him down a fair amount
- he didn't play his Ambassador that well (on T3 he had Amb-CCCE and returned the Estate, buying a Silver.  He should have focused on the Coppers, especially since I opened Mountebank)
- my really extremely lucky Tournament hit, which let me get Followers
- he got the second prize and went for... Diadem?  He had some level-2 Cities and a couple Border Villages, but still.  Seemed like a really weird decision to me, I would have gone Steed or maybe Princess at that point.

Do you see any other key factors though?

36

Dominion General Discussion / When do you want to buy more than one Potion?

« on: September 13, 2012, 01:48:17 pm »

This was kind of prompted by Powerman's article on Scrying Pool that was posted yesterday (which I enjoyed very much, thanks Powerman!)  When do you think it's appropriate to buy two Potions?

I think you might want to do it when enough of the following criteria are satisfied:
- you have a way of turning the Potions into something useful after you don't need them (Mine, Remodel, Salvager, other trash-for-benefit cards)
- there are cheap Potion-cost cards you want a lot of (mainly Scrying Pool I think, but maybe Transmute in some cases?)
- there's a good source of +Buy available (kind of an adjunct to the above, having +Buy and two Potions gives you the chance of buying two SPs in one turn, which maybe is something you need to go for sometimes?)
- you want to go for Vineyards (+Buy is important here again)
- you want to buy lots of Alchemists and you want to increase your chances of being able to topdeck them every turn.

Are there other scenarios I missed?  How many of the above factors have to converge to make buying more than one Potion worth it?

And another question: would you ever want three (or more?!) Potions?  I would think it's exceedingly rare that you'd need more than two.  And maybe two is even too much, I don't know.