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51

Dominion General Discussion / Re: iOS Dominion - Big Money, Big Win

« on: February 24, 2012, 01:55:44 pm »

It is generally accepted that Big Money or some simple variation thereof (BM + Smithy, BM + 2 Library, BM + 2 Witch, etc.) is highly competitive when dealing with cards only in the base game.

Big Money is also very competitive against players who overbuy actions, and can even be competitive against strong experienced players trying to build complicated combinations if they do it in the wrong order.  That is, it's easy to build a complex deck badly, but it's hard(er) to screw up playing Big Money.

Finally, Big Money tends to be more competitive in multiplayer, since in multiplayer there are more players competing for the same number of actions. So where you might get 4-6 of a hotly contested action in 2p, you might only get 2-4 in 4p. That makes it harder to chain together combinations. 4+p games also go much faster since there are fewer provinces per player; this rewards a strategy that ramps up quickly and gives less time and strategic room for comebacks, both of which are conducive to Big Money strategies.

That being said, a strategy that buys nothing but money and VP is no-doubt a long-term loser on the vast majority of 2p boards.

52

Tournaments and Events / Re: Any interest in local live tournaments/leagues? (updated 2/15)

« on: February 23, 2012, 09:50:05 pm »

Southern California - Beyond Awesome, olneyce, Axxle, Wingnut, ftl, mischiefmaker, Zeritel, O

I think only Axxle, Wingnut, and ftl are in SoCal. olneyce, Zeritel, O, and mischiefmaker are in the San Francisco Bay Area. Beyond Awesome is somewhere in the middle.

53

Dominion Articles / Combo or trap: Tournament/Scheme

« on: February 23, 2012, 06:48:58 pm »

jonts' Scheme article going up on the blog today and a game I played got me thinking about this potential combo.

Strengths:
 - Once you win the first tournament, Scheme gives you the ability to get more plays out of your Trusty Steed or Followers (or Princess or Bag of Gold, I guess). This is probably the biggest attraction.
 - Since you will often want some other action for trying to quickly bootstrap to $8, if you miss, Scheme lets you try again. For instance, say you play Vault, but don't draw Gold -- just buy Gold, topdeck the Vault, and try again.
 - If you have a couple of Tournaments and a Province already, but don't get them to collide, you can topdeck the Tournament to try again.
 - In many tournament games, you often want to use a Tournament to get to $8 and your first Province. In cases where your Tournament is at the end of the shuffle, having a Scheme prevents it from missing the shuffle and improves the chances you can collide Province/Tournament on the next shuffle.

Traps:
 - As the article says, Scheme sacrifices power for reliability. Having a Scheme instead of Silver might make it harder to get that first Province. Having the ability to topdeck Followers doesn't mean much if your opponent gets to Followers first.
 - Since you often want some other action to quickly bootstrap to $8, Scheme might get in the way. Terminal draw is the most obvious example.

Tournament is one of my 15 or so worst cards (-1.49 Eff With), so I'm hesitant to make definitive statements, but it seems to me that on balance it's worth picking up a Scheme or two in a Tournament-based deck. Not sure when, though -- before the bootstrapping action? After, but before Tournaments? After Tournaments, but before Province? After Tournament/Province? After getting a Prize? Probably depends on the rest of the board, but I'd like to hear thoughts from others.

54

Dominion Articles / Re: Hunting Party Combos

« on: February 23, 2012, 03:46:00 pm »

On a 5/2 split, Merchant Ship is a fine choice. It loses to a Hunting Party/Horse Traders strategy that opens 4/3, but (slightly) beats one that opens 5/2.

On this particular board, though, I'm pretty sure Bishop/Chapel into a Golden Deck is going to smoke either of those strategies.

55

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cards you only need one copy of

« on: February 23, 2012, 01:33:56 am »

I have a hard time believing double Moneylender with IGG is a good way to go. If you buy a Silver instead, any hand you draw Moneylender-Copper, you get $3, same as Silver-Copper. Trashing the Copper isn't that great, since you actually like having tons of copper in the endgame. And that's if you happen to get a random $4 hand; if you pay $5 to get the second Moneylender, there's the huge opportunity cost.

It's not uncommon for there to be multiple Feasts in your deck at once. It's usually not how you plan to use that card, but hey, stuff happens. It's definitely not a card you never want to buy more than one of.

What about Contraband? I imagine if I think long enough I can come up with some situation where I want multiples, but it seems pretty rare.

56

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Help for Beginners

« on: February 23, 2012, 01:13:00 am »

It doesn't create or manage a Black Market deck, though, which a couple of the iphone apps do (Dominion KD does, though not as well as I might like, and I believe one of the paid versions does, and has features like specifying size and contents of the BM deck).

57

Dominion Articles / Re: Ghost Ship

« on: February 21, 2012, 08:54:55 pm »

Nice article!

A couple things worth mentioning:

1. You talked about decreased cycle speed, but I think this is a point worth fleshing out. Part of what makes Ghost Ship's attack superior to Militia's is that not only do you play with a decreased hand size but you also slow down the rate at which you see your good cards. For that reason, I think Ghost Ship is a bit stronger in the early game (as it prevents your opponent from improving his deck and actually getting to any counters he might have).

2. Games dominated by Ghost Ship have a strong psychological component to them as well. When you're under relentless Ghost Ship attack, it's tempting to just say "aw, screw it, every hand is terrible" and not think about what you put back or just give up and resign. But if you're smart about tracking your deck, you can improve your chances of getting Gold, Province, or another Ghost Ship. You also need to be aware that the game will likely go much longer than usual, with smaller hand sizes, and prepare accordingly.

58

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Attention-whoring thread.... I did it!!

« on: February 19, 2012, 03:14:44 pm »

Not that impressive when matched against the exploits of jonts26, Fabian, and painted_cow, but something I really wanted to do before isotropic fades into the mists of time:

http://screencast.com/t/hhiM3Tej

Just barely made it, mostly on the strength of a lucky 7-0 day three days ago. I guess this means I should stop making excuses about being unqualified to finish the "Making it to Level 40" series of articles.

Big thanks to everyone in the community for sharing their wisdom and knowledge, especially Geronimoo/rspeer (simulators), rrenaud (councilroom), and theory (starting ds.com in the first place)!

59

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Hinterlands/Prosperity set; what would you do here?

« on: February 19, 2012, 02:37:17 pm »

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Cartographer and Expand as supplements to the Goons engine. With 2 Quarries, you'll be able to pick up either one on the cheap. I'd open Quarry/Silver and pick up Cartographer before my second Quarry (though it should be noted that engine building is one of the weakest parts of my game). Cartographer + Inn helps you put together those big Goons hands without needing more Inns, an overreliance on which might be problematic if you're getting Goons'd every turn.

This board is particularly interesting in 3p, though, because there's a lot to react to. If your opponents both get Goons, Jack might be a good response (Inn/Jack/Expand the Silver). If not, you're in good shape...unless they both start rushing Tunnel/Silk Road before your engine has a chance to get going.

60

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Bully award

« on: February 16, 2012, 01:33:45 am »

Loss 2
My second loss, from less than a month ago, involved the thought process "Pirate Ship is bad because it's slow; but if I'm Scheming, I can play Pirate Ship much more frequently, getting its value higher, so it should work much better!" Nope.

Yep, this was my thought process too. Plus Walled Village on the board, so multiple Pirate Ship plays! What could go wrong?

Um, yeah...not the best plan against Treasure Map: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111021-084821-91d672b8.html *facepalm*

61

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Cartographer/Tunnel

« on: February 15, 2012, 09:22:00 pm »

I checked a few sample games and I didn't see anything egregious. It might not be perfect at something like:

Hand: Cartographer, Harvest, Silver, Copper, Copper.
Cartographer draws Copper, reveals Copper, Copper, Estate, Silver.

I'm pretty sure in this case it will discard Copper, Copper, Estate, put back the Silver, and play Harvest, which might not trigger the $3 needed for a Province, while returning Copper, Estate, Silver is guaranteed to. On the other hand, this deck is fairly diverse, so the Harvest is likely to trigger for $3 most of the time anyway.

You can make a similar argument for the hand needing $4, but then an optimal player can't guarantee $4 either. He can improve the chance by guaranteeing $3, but my gut says that this deck is pretty diverse so the marginal improvement is probably not that big.

62

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Cartographer/Tunnel

« on: February 15, 2012, 08:56:32 pm »

I tried it with:

- Cartographer first, then Harvest, then Tunnel (60-36 loser to Cartographer/Tunnel)
- Harvest first, then Cartographer, then Tunnel (63-33)
- Cartographer first, then Tunnel, then Harvest (62-34)

in each case following with Cartographers and Tunnels, avoiding Gold and Silver, using the template for straight Cartographer/Tunnel.

Code: [Select]

<player name="Cartographer/X/Tunnel"
 author="mischiefmaker"
 description="A template for testing how well other cards play with the Cartographer/Tunnel combo.">
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="Combo"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="Competitive"/>
   <buy name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="5.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Tunnel">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Harvest">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Harvest"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Cartographer">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Cartographer"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Tunnel">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Cartographer"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Tunnel"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Cartographer">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Cartographer"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="countAllCardsInDeck"/>
         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="5.0" />
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Tunnel">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Cartographer"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>

Disclaimer: I have never been very good at tweaking the sim for optimality, so it's very likely someone can do better. Take results with a grain of salt.

63

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Cartographer/Tunnel

« on: February 15, 2012, 07:26:04 pm »

Adding single Navigator is a big improvement - Cartographer/Navigator/Tunnel handily beats Smithy-BM and Envoy-BM.

Adding Harvest, on the other hand, loses to straight Cartographer/Tunnel. Not sure why this is.

64

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Cartographer/Tunnel

« on: February 15, 2012, 06:17:31 pm »

You are exactly right, and this explains why Cartographer/Tunnel is inferior to Warehouse/Tunnel, among others. I'll edit the post to reflect that.

65

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What is the worst card in Dominion?

« on: February 15, 2012, 06:05:57 pm »

I have never been able to see the point of it at all.  The only combo it really works with is Chancellor, as far as I can tell.  And the ONE time my opponent tried Chancellor/Stash, he lost to my rather pedestrian BM game.

Simulator has Chancellor/Stash, played properly, as a monster favorite over Big Money (73-22). Even the built-in Chancellor/Stash, which is non-optimized, is a 60-30 favorite.

I guess it's possible your opponent played the combo so badly that he actually was an underdog, but that's really tough to do. (I tried, and even a very bad strategy that only buys Province-Stash-Chancellor, and goes for Duchies too late, is favored over optimized BMU + Stash -- even when it sometimes ends up with 6-7 Chancellors in a <30 card deck!) Seems more likely that he just got unlucky.

I'm not saying Stash is a powerhouse, but it's reasonably useful in a BMU deck for helping to smooth first-reshuffle draws, and Chancellor/Stash is as good as advertised.

Did you miss Wandering Winder's Stash-as-counter-to-Sab post? Made me think maybe there's more to it.

Do you have a link to this handy? I searched for "stash saboteur" but only turned up a couple of posts by chwhite.

66

Dominion Articles / Combo: Cartographer/Tunnel

« on: February 15, 2012, 05:37:47 pm »

I imagine most of those who frequent this forum already know about this combo, but the specifics are kind of interesting.

First, let's talk about these cards separately. As alluded to in another thread, Cartographer can be a bit of a trap card, as it's easy to fall in love with its sifting power only to realize that you haven't bought enough good cards to actually sift for. In addition, it's easy to trigger unwanted reshuffles, and since you've sifted through all your junk, your next few hands will be mostly that junk.

Tunnel can be another trap card. At first glance it either looks so powerful (2 VP for $3 AND you can get bunches of Gold?) or so weak (only one VP more than Estate, and how am I ever going to trigger the Gold-gaining effect?). Then you realize that there are tons of cards that cause discards and maybe you buy a Tunnel, only to find that either you can't trigger them as often as you'd hoped (Oracle, opponent's single Militia), so you buy more Tunnels, and now you have tons of Gold, but your hands are all Gold-Gold-Tunnel-Tunnel-Copper. Sad panda.

Putting these cards together helps them solve each other's weaknesses. Cartographer's 4-card discard reach and the ability to chain multiple Cartographers means you don't need very many deck-clogging Tunnels to reliably trigger the effect. The Gold-gaining effect solves the dilemma of having to spend your buy on Cartographers and still get good cards to sift for. Add it up and you have a combo that's reasonably competitive.

However, it's important to make note of two things. One, while this combo is reasonably good, it's inferior to both Smithy-BM and Envoy-BM. (It has a narrow margin of victory in the simulator, but that's because the default bots don't buy Tunnel. Add a buy rule to buy Tunnel at <= 3 Provinces and both Smithy-BM and Envoy-BM pull ahead.) Two, it's a huge dog to at least three other Tunnel strategies: Young Witch/Tunnel, which is a beast, Warehouse/Tunnel, which gets going fast, and Embassy/Tunnel; this is because while Cartographer reaches 4 cards into your deck, it can't discard anything in your hand, so having both in the same hand gives you the double whammy of having a dead card *and* not being able to find/discard it for Gold. It's pretty good when there's not much else going on on the board, but it's not always going to be the dominant strategy, and it's not that fast (it derives most of its power from the additional VP from Tunnels, which you can hit early without clogging the deck).

Also of interest is that this strategy plays well with other cards, unless they're terminal draw. Cartographer/Monument/Tunnel is nearly a 3:1 winner over Monument-BM, and Cartographer/Mountebank/Tunnel is a 60-40 favorite as well. Cartographer/Witch/Tunnel, on the other hand, is nearly dead even with just plain Witch.

67

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Bully award

« on: February 15, 2012, 03:26:09 pm »

I have it four times. Twice I opened Minion/Chapel; once I did it with Minion/Swindler, and once with Pirate Ship/Scheme.

So not only have I done it with Pirate Ship, I've also gotten the Bully award in a game I *lost*.

68

Dominion Articles / Re: Ill-Gotten Gains

« on: February 14, 2012, 01:04:33 pm »

It seems like City + useful terminals might be a good counter to IGG, though, since you're sure to have the cities activate.

I haven't actually played this, though, and searching councilroom for top players who've played games with IGG/City doesn't yield anything useful.

Simulator hates pure City v IGG (90%+ win rate for IGG player, and that's without the possibility of him ending the game on Cities), and adding something like Smithy or Salvager doesn't really help much. Is this another case of Trade Route/Crossroads (seems like a good idea in theory but just doesn't work in practice)?

69

Tournaments and Events / Re: Any interest in local live tournaments/leagues?

« on: February 14, 2012, 12:57:49 pm »

I'd be interested in something in the SF Bay Area.

70

Dominion Articles / Re: Silk Road

« on: January 13, 2012, 07:23:25 pm »

Does Silk Road also Work With curse-givers?

Reasoning (somewhat oversimplified):
1. SR conflicts with fast engines and trashing; cursing cards prevent fast engines and slow down trashing.
2. Curse-givers tend to exhaust one pile on their own, making a SR/Duchy or SR/Estate rush much easier.
3. If you give your opponent all the Curses, chances are you're going to win anyway. If you don't, both your decks are likely to be junky. A junky deck has a hard time building up to Province, but a much easier time getting $4/5. Even if you clog up your deck with Silk Roads and Duchies, you should still be able to get $2 for Estates, which are worth much more to a SR player than a Province player.

See sample game here: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120112-082530-85602d7b.html (although Familiar v. Sea Hag was probably doomed from the start)

71

Dominion General Discussion / Re: (New?) Turn 3 Province!

« on: January 11, 2012, 01:27:02 pm »

Is this somewhere in the puzzle thread? I can figure out how to do it in a 4p game without much difficulty, but not in a 2p game.

72

Dominion Articles / Re: Alchemy: Apothecary

« on: January 07, 2012, 06:35:50 pm »

I played a couple hours' worth of Apothecary-Wishing Well, Apothecary-Warehouse, Apothecary-Salvager, and Apothecary-Coppersmith solitaire games to get a feel for these decks, and I have to say, they're fun to play and put a lot more emphasis on tactics (controlling your reshuffle and the top of your deck, primarily) than most strategies.

Also it seems to me that any of these combos on their own are not blazing fast -- I didn't sim them because of the decision points I mention above but with no other help on the board they usually clock in around 15-16 turns. If you green early you can get to 3 provinces around 12 turns but then the deck stalls pretty hard (Salvager of course being the exception) and you can flail for several turns without even being able to buy Duchies. I suspect that these combos tend to be like King's Court-Scheme (just to pick an example that comes to mind); if you just play KC-Scheme-BM, you're not really doing it right. Same with Apothecary-Warehouse-BM: reasonably fast, maybe good enough to stand on its own if the rest of the board is meh, but will really shine as the core of your engine.

While I was messing around, I discovered a high-variance combo that is a ton of fun to play: Apothecary/Chancellor. It's not great; a lot of times it doesn't get going until late and then stalls early, but when it clicks, it is VERY fast (4 provinces in 12-14 turns). I would totally play this deck in a home game where I don't as much care about winning.

73

Dominion Articles / Re: Updating the Top 5 lists

« on: January 06, 2012, 07:21:19 pm »

(Possible exception: Ill-Gotten Gains, which isn't worth buying 80 percent of the time but is so dominant when the rush is viable). 

Completely off-topic: wait what? In the IGG topic, rrenaud says you can ignore it about 30% of the time and about 30% of the time it is good but not dominant. That seems closer to my experience, unless by "not worth buying" you mean "not worth buying, unless your opponent goes for them, and then maybe you need to buy a few to prevent yourself from getting all 10 curses", in which case 80% seems a little high, but not crazy (probably closer to 70%).

Quick survey of top players reveals no buy rate under 65% and no average number gained under 1.5, which seems to support that interpretation.

74

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: King's Court/Scheme

« on: January 06, 2012, 05:10:06 pm »

Well, Apothecary had a lot to do with it too, since it a) drew cards, b) cleaned out your deck's junk, and c) increased buying power.

But that's a minor nitpick. That game is like a clinic on how to build an engine. Very well played, and thanks for sharing.

75

Dominion Articles / Re: Updating the Top 5 lists

« on: January 06, 2012, 12:58:43 pm »

I think you're doing a great job and I would recommend you not worry too terribly much about whether the lists are objective/scientific/precise -- I think the whole point of lists is to spark discussion. I mean, if there were a universally acknowledged metric and a monotonic ordering, the list wouldn't be very interesting, right? Like, nobody makes a list of "The 5 best baseball cards"*.

I also think that the answer to your question depends a little bit on your audience. If dominionstrategy.com is aimed at a small community of high-level players who are trying to refine their games, then I think it makes sense to more heavily favor "when this card is good, how good is it?"; i.e. Coppersmith > Spy. But, if it were my blog, I would be aiming at the audience of all people who play Dominion, in which case I think the metric should be something like:

(how often is this card useful) x (how good is it when it is useful) - (how often/badly does it actively harm your deck)

...in which case I would put Spy > Coppersmith since Coppersmith tends to be useful a whole lot less than Spy and can be a shiny trap card for newer players.

But like I said, you're doing a great job, and if people disagree (even vehemently), that's probably a good thing.

* Well, ok, that's not strictly true.