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1

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Furious

« on: December 21, 2013, 06:17:20 am »

I just went on here and searched tgorm just to see if anyone else had been slow rolled by him - lo and behold, I wasn't the only one!  Also saw another guy in the chat room complaining about him slow playing after he was obviously beat later on that day.

Nobody needs to hear the specifics (he thought I was getting lucky, he made some bad choices at the beginning which contributed to him being unlucky, he curses, then the slow plays.....).

Anyway, for anyone still looking at this thread - tgorm.  Don't play him.  Honestly, do yourself a favor and don't do it.

2

Game Reports / Odd VP game

« on: June 12, 2012, 01:57:53 pm »

Here is a game that I thought was odd and interesting - I'm curious the direction you guys would go.

One thing that made it really odd was that I got a 5/2 split, though I'm not sure that I wanted that.

I end up winning, though I'm surprised - both because I felt like chapel opening was probably a mistake here, and because Rabid is a better player than me.

Anyway - I think there's more to this game that we didn't explore in this game.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/12/game-20120612-104923-e1110e5f.html

3

General Discussion / Re: Who lives in NYC?

« on: May 12, 2012, 02:32:20 pm »

I'm actually moving to Princeton in the fall, and will be in NYC a decent amount.  If any sort of meetup happens, keep me in the loop.

4

Game Reports / Avoiding Chapel

« on: December 20, 2011, 02:44:43 pm »

This game is interesting to me primarily because I avoided chapel, which I debated about for a while at the opening.  I'm interested in strategies which beat generally dominant cards like chapel/ambassador/etc.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111216-142833-2839e62f.html
(I should note, ackack has routinely beat me, so this game is an anomaly for us).

I believe ackack has his chapel not quite hit well, but I'm not sure if it would have mattered in terms of outcome, though might have made the score closer.  With the presence of Bank, it makes those wharf turns too good, and hard to justify cleaning out coppers.  Anyway, I open siver/silver, in the hopes of getting a wharf, maybe two, to start off with.  I end up with a wharf and a crossroads after the reshuffle.  Crossroads here was obviously a key card and really makes those wharf turns unbelievable. 

Curious of people's thoughts - if you remove bank OR crossroads, do you think chapel becomes dominant there?  Obviously without either, I think chapel is necessary.  Is one more necessary? 

Really, I think I'm curious of when it is okay to avoid chapel.  Maybe there is no firm heuristic, but thought it might be worth discussing.

5

Help! / What could I have done here??

« on: December 20, 2011, 02:33:21 pm »

I'm curious for feedback on this game.  What could I have done here in this game?

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111219-144428-ddfeefd0.html

I get that Blooki is a clear step (or two) ahead of me in terms of skill, but I feel like I am winning this game around turn 7, when I have 3-1 alchemist lead, and we both have almost identical cards (2 potions, masquerade).  I then go Platinum, Alchemist and he gets 2 more alchemists.  He also embargoes the Colonies.

The key move here seemed to be having to pass him my potion on a masq.  Was this a mistake (hand was Alchemist x3, Platinum, potion).  From there it pretty much unravels and I felt dead in the water.

Curious what thoughts are on this game.

 

6

2011 / Re: Schedule and Results: 2011 DominionStrategy.com Championships

« on: December 01, 2011, 01:39:41 am »

theparty looses to grep 4-3.  logs will be posted when councilroom updates.

7

2011 / Re: 2011 DominionStrategy.com Championships Registration

« on: November 21, 2011, 12:48:08 pm »

1.  theParty
2.  Us Central Time

8

GokoDom / Re: IsoDom 2 Match-ups Round 1

« on: November 04, 2011, 01:36:28 pm »

The reason I ignored moats were primarily because I didn't want them to draw my familiars dead, and because of how fast the curses are typically given out in a familiar game, then the moat becomes a real liability

When you consider the chances of the moat being good (opponent has a familiar in a five card hand) compared to it being bad (your familiar is in two cards on top of your deck) then the odds are in the moats favour. You can improve that further by watching your draw deck. More than that, you might be only looking at the bad consequences and not the good. The tribute doesn't attack you by turning over the top two cards of your deck. The moat will at worst cycle the top two cards and you may even be able to spend them too.

Yeah - I thought about that.  I don't run any simulations, so I don't really know what the numbers would say.  You're probably right though - moat might have swung that game even more towards me.

9

GokoDom / Re: IsoDom 2 Match-ups Round 1

« on: November 04, 2011, 01:34:00 pm »

I think I'm just not a huge fan of reaction cards, except watchtower.  Probably to a fault, as I think I overlook them.

Moat and Secret Chamber are for sure overlookable, I try to buy them as little as possible. Not technically a Reaction, but Lighthouse is more-or-less straight up better than Silver when Attacks are around, so it's worth getting a bunch.  The others are all situationally useful but more for the benefit they provide your deck than for Attack defense.  Among cards that say "Reaction" on them, I think Tunnel is now usually the strongest, though Watchtower definitely used to hold that title.

Yes - I put lighthouse in a different category (duration), though obviously it has that same effect.  Tunnel is interesting, and probably should be one of the forthcoming extended posts.  I absolutely love how it changes games where militia is the obvious opener.

10

GokoDom / Re: IsoDom 2 Match-ups Round 1

« on: November 04, 2011, 12:32:23 pm »

a slogfest, familiar game.  Not much to comment here, though I'd be curious if someone has a different strategy on this board, or would you try to get ahead and 3 pile like we did....

Moats?

The reason I ignored moats were primarily because I didn't want them to draw my familiars dead, and because of how fast the curses are typically given out in a familiar game, then the moat becomes a real liability.  If i never play it, I've essentially given myself a curse in terms of dead card).  If my moat blocks his familiar, it's +1 curse for me, but if my moat draws my familiar dead, it's the same result the other way.  DG - are you saying you would grab the moats in this kingdom if it's obvious that your opponent is going familiar? 

I think I'm just not a huge fan of reaction cards, except watchtower.  Probably to a fault, as I think I overlook them.

11

GokoDom / Re: IsoDom 2 Match-ups Round 1

« on: November 03, 2011, 04:50:12 pm »

theParty won 4-2 over WrathofGlod/Michael Harris.  Close games all around and fairly well played I thought (save for a huge mental error in game 2 by me).

I am missing a log for some reason, but here they are, save the 5th game:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/03/game-20111103-121342-9adbb7d0.html - Bishop and Hoard were the key cards for both of us, and both were strengthened by Harem.  I felt like I was in the hole with the 5/2 opening and purchasing bishop/courtyard instead of my preferred silver/bishop, but looking back, i may open that again with a 4/3.  The swindler was a horrible move, and was essentially a dead card for me the entire game.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/03/game-20111103-122415-33a6b015.html - KC/GM game.  I was ahead, primarily because I invested in markets to have something to KC.  Once both our engines got going, I was slightly ahead.  I added wrong on turn 20, and almost bought out the piles......He ended the game next turn.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/03/game-20111103-123823-1642c30d.html - a slogfest, familiar game.  Not much to comment here, though I'd be curious if someone has a different strategy on this board, or would you try to get ahead and 3 pile like we did....

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/03/game-20111103-125514-0414e58c.html - This was the most interesting kingdom I thought that we drew.  Colony game.  Goons, Grand Market, Sabatouer (which plays heavily in ours), Possession, and NV were the key cards, with almost every card supporting in some way.  He actually Sabatuers my early possession, and then when he gets a possession later, possesses the only Colony had I've had all game.  Felt lucky to get out of there with a win after that turn of events.  I purchased more on my double goons turns, which I think was the difference in the game.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/03/game-20111103-132317-6e18d393.html - this last game was very similar to the game before it (log is missing), in that the obvious strategy was to use council room (or governor in the previous game) to get a large hand, then ghost ship the opponents hand down.  I opened 5/2 which gave me a big advantage here.  In the post game wrap, we both agreed that loan/masq. was a bad opener, and would have passed on the loan next time.


Would love to hear any thoughts for people who actually look at the logs.....
 

12

GokoDom / Re: IsoDom 2 Match-ups Round 1

« on: October 31, 2011, 02:41:38 pm »

I'm here Mean Mr. Mustard.  I've been in NJ and the east coast storm knocked out power where I was for a few days.

On a side note - does anyone know what michaelharris's dominion strategy name is??  Tried to message him, but is said "one or more recipients does not exist".  Anyone know?  Or point me to the old thread where people were signing up so I can link to him from there??

13

Dominion General Discussion / Re: So the new Hinterlands cards are coming out... thoughts?

« on: October 13, 2011, 12:53:42 pm »

You can add Border Village/Bishop to the list of combos. 

You can either get what you want with the border village, and bishop that later, or just use it to add fuel for your bishop to eat up.  Ideally, something like Bazzar/Treasury in there, so that you can get the card you want to keep, and bishop the BV.

Haven't messed around with it too much, but definitely worked in the last game I played.

14

Dominion General Discussion / Re: So the new Hinterlands cards are coming out... thoughts?

« on: October 13, 2011, 11:56:08 am »

I just played my first few games with these cards and I love them.

Obviously BV is amazing in some instances, and not in others.  Even if there isn't a deadly combo on there like Wharf or (gulp) Torturer, you still often end up with 6 and decide to buy the 5 dollar power attack (mountebank, witch, ghost ship).  The BV is awesome here (I just used it with Ghost Ship and it really makes that card a lot more effective and less collisions with multiples in my 1 game sample anyway).

Trader is much more intriguing to me, it has the potential to totally change strategy, though I don't really know if it can do that yet.  'm waiting to hit a Duke board with it, as I would imagine it would perform very well.

15

GokoDom / Re: IsoDom Tourney Round 2 Match-Ups and Results

« on: September 26, 2011, 05:45:04 pm »

Congrats to Davio - he played well.  I didn't.

Thanks for organizing this Mustard!  Was fun to be a part of, however short lived my stay in this tournament was.

16

GokoDom / Re: IsoDom Tourney SignUp

« on: September 20, 2011, 01:34:35 pm »

I'll join if I still can....seems like not enough spots.

Is Mean Mr. Mustard in charge?  Is space closed??

17

Dominion Articles / Apothecary

« on: September 01, 2011, 07:28:04 pm »

Note – I just saw that Mean Mr. Mustard put up a post about Apothecary as well, particularly in its interaction with Vault, so my apologies if anything in here is redundant, though from my brief reading of his post, I don’t think there is a ton of overlap.  Hopefully this looks at some different interactions that the card has, as I have seen very little discussion of it.  What are the chances of 2 posts in the same day?  Anyway…..

Apothecary is a card that I often see overlooked in kingdoms despite its unique capabilities.  While Scrying Pool is something that people can easily see building around, Apothecary never gets this type of treatment, though it has some excellent pairings that can enable some power engines.  Like other cards with some nuance, it must be used correctly, and takes some more planning than most cards.

Apothecary essentially has 2 abilities – drawing out treasures that clog, and reorganizing your deck in order to play your next card or next hand the way you want.  The first ability is obvious, though copper based strategies are often tough to make work against straight big money/big money+.  Apothecary really can work quite well with coppersmith, and if you don’t buy many other cards to clog, you can pretty assuredly purchase a province every time you have an apothecary + coppersmith (and of course, because of the reorganization of your deck, will get this combo more often than other 2 card combos.  I don’t have the ability to run it on a simulator or know how to do that (and this seems to be a hard card to program?), but I’d be curious how it would perform.  I’ve played the combo with real cards (not on isotropic) so I don’t have a log for it.  This, of course, works much better on a board with poor, or no trashing.

Apothecary’s reorganizing of decks is really a much more powerful thing.  The simplest form of this is that, it can put the card you want on top for your +1/+1 card to draw.  First, it can be a tremendous combination with Hunting Party.  Draw a card, then reorganize your deck so you will draw it the way you want and discard the things you want to discard (i.e. draw the gold instead of discarding it because you already have one in your hand).  One of the most frustrating things about HP is that it can discard great cards because you already have one – Apothecary can solve this problem by putting it first, and then stuff your coppers and estates behind them so they get skipped over.

Torturer chains can be the most frustrating part of dominion, seem to give a huge edge to the first player to get theirs going first, and have such a high variance due to the luck of drawing things in proper order.  Apothecary cut this variance.  I recently played a game where Apothecary was the reason that I won because I was able to set up a torturer chain much quicker and more importantly, much more reliably by setting up the order of the following cards, and won’t end up with 3 villages, no torturers (and then 2-3 torturers with no village).  This obviously works with any drawing card combination, but it is most important with torturer.  You’ll have to weigh the opportunity cost of buying the potion instead of just another village, but if you get a couple apothecaries in your deck, you will be in a much better position to draw your cards in the correct order and do the same on subsequent turns. 

edit: as per Rod's comment.Apothecary can also mitigate against swindler attacks/jester attacks and anything else that look at the top of your deck and mess with it.  If you’re not going to be drawing anything else after you play your apothecary, leave the estate on the top, and let your opponent swindle it into another estate.  Is your opponent jestering?  Leave a silver on top and give him the most annoying of all choices when playing a Jester – who should gain the silver??

18

Other Games / Re: 7 Wonders??

« on: August 16, 2011, 12:28:55 pm »

Thanks for all the info guys.  Much appreciated.

19

Other Games / 7 Wonders??

« on: August 16, 2011, 09:39:02 am »

Has anyone played 7 Wonders?  It keeps popping up for me on Amazon's suggestions, and people's descriptions of it always reference Dominion.

Has anyone that has played it comment?  Looking for new games, as friends are sick of Dominion......

20

Dominion Articles / Re: I don't know what this thread has turned into (was Making it to Level 42 -Lvl 5)

« on: July 28, 2011, 06:04:23 pm »

Wow - I just got sucked into reading this whole thread.  I had no idea there was this kind of vitriol around the top of the leaderboard.

I'm nowhere near the top of the leaderboard (high 20s, low 30s lately), but I think the real reason to care about your rank (at least why I care about my rank) is that you can get matched against better players.  I suppose some people want to play lower ranked opponents to beat up on them, but a lot of people (myself), want to play similar or better opponents for a good game, or to get better.  Auto-matching has obviously changed things, but I decline auto-matches all the time from lower ranked players.  They may be good, and they may beat me if we played, but it's not a very fun game when I am auto-matched against someone and they buy a mine instead of a mountebank with their 5/2 opening.

That's why (I think) your rank matters, and why I care about mine.  I have no idea how the ranking system work (beyond, win and you move up proportionately to who you beat), but it's pretty accurate in that people towards the top of the leaderboard usually beat me, and I usually beat people who are 10 levels below me.