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1
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is border village a trap?
« on: November 03, 2011, 11:42:31 am »
I got devastated by Border Village / Rabble in a game with no +buy. I thought my opponent was way over building their deck, but once my deck started to green it completely shut me down allowing him a huge comeback window.

2
Council Room Feedback / Re: New images for new goals?
« on: September 02, 2011, 12:09:52 am »
Where can we see the complete list of goals and which ones need images?

MrGreenGenes: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/image.php?u=37512&dateline=1156783450

3
When I'm playing at work, I only play with a select group of RL friends. This is because they understand that we're all playing at work, and may have to suddenly / inexplicably go afk for 10 minutes. However, if I can take my turn quickly, let them progress, and go back over the turns at a later time (hopefully during their turns), it's preferable to waiting until I have time to process what each of them did as well as take a turn.

I said that I wish it was a toggled option, same as the point counter; in effect, it's nothing more than a verbose point counter.

4
Try typing something like 'frozen?' in the chat box. I've had this cause the game state to update a couple times.

5
I agree, but for different reasons than Personman.  I play while doing other things - like folding laundry, or emptying the dishwasher, etc... so it's very nice to be able to play without having to pay attention to everything my opponent does.  If it was important, I can quickly ctrl-F and go find it.
Your opponent's most recent turn is still visible.
From time to time, I play with friends while I'm at work. There's been more than one occasion where I tab back to take a 'trivial' turn, like buy a province with an all-money hand, quickly before tabbing out again in order to keep them from having to wait. I used to be able to go back a couple turns, but now I can't. It's enough of an edge case that it's not really a problem for me, but it is the main reason I miss about the old way (or more specifically, wish there was a toggle).

6
Dominion Articles / Re: Request: Avoiding end-game deck stalls
« on: June 27, 2011, 12:42:43 pm »
One comment in the Annotated Game #8 that turned on a light bulb for me was
Quote
Whenever you come out the better after an intense competition for Actions, you should look to see if you can end it on piles rather than VPs (especially if you are first player).  Sometimes you can’t, because of a lack of +Buy, but more often than not there’s a way to safely end the game on piles rather than going for a more risky VP exhaustion.  You want to look for non-terminals that essentially guarantee your deck can’t stall out while ending the game.
http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/05/30/annotated-game-8/

This has significantly improved my game lately. The thought process being now that both our engines are off the ground, there should be a couple of low piles from the engines. Rather than buying 3 Provinces and a Duchy, which may or may not be enough of a lead when I draw 3 green cards and two gold next turn, can I end the game right now if I buy a village, 2 council rooms, and a duchy?

Here's a sample game where my 'engine' never really took off, and seemed very prone to stalling, but I was able to end on piles after 1 big turn. http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110626-230430-2d129aee.html

7
Dominion Isotropic / Re: Decline of civility on isotropic?
« on: June 27, 2011, 12:05:30 pm »
People tend to overestimate their opponents' good luck and their own bad luck, and underestimate their opponents' bad luck and their own good luck.

It's very obvious when you draw two clashing terminals, but it's not as obvious when it happens to your opponent, since you only see him play one of them.
Just yesterday, I had the following happen in a Colony game with KC and Mountebank.

So, this guy get's 5/2 and buys Mountebank on the first turn:
19:15 Stoc: hi, gl
19:15 Player2: hi
19:16 Stoc: ugh
19:16 Player2: yea
19:16 Player2: turn 1 kill
19:16 Stoc: I wish that box for same starting hands worked in automatch :)
19:16 Player2: yup

Then, I get my KC before him:
19:18 Player2: that was pretty ulcky
19:18 Stoc: yeah, guess it works both ways
19:18 Stoc: really the more I play, the more games I see decided by luck. Unless there's major skill dif

Then, the next shuffle, I draw my KC and Mountebank together:
19:20 Stoc: for example...
19:21 Player2 has returned to the lobby. (resigned)


I also had another guy berate me on my "totally undeserved win" due to the fact I had pulled Ambassador out of the Black Market before he rage quit.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110625-164457-2ada0f08.html

8
Dominion Isotropic / Re: Decline of civility on isotropic?
« on: June 21, 2011, 01:21:43 pm »
Clearly Isotropic should just automatically prompt you once you are sufficiently far behind.


"You look like you're really crapping the bed in this game.  You should probably just resign."
This made me spit out my water. :)

9
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is Golem worth it ?
« on: June 18, 2011, 03:59:27 pm »
Golem + Tactician + any card drawer = ULTIMATE AWESOME

that is all

Here's a game where I managed to force a draw just before getting smashed by my opponent's double-tactician 15-card hand, courtesy of golem-tactician-minion.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110606-225930-6385fe49.html

10
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Average Turns Per Game
« on: June 18, 2011, 01:11:32 pm »
Well, sometimes the game will last longer, even if I could end it earlier. Just because I am trying to get this game safely won and not getting wrecked by extreme lucky draws from my opponents.
I'm curious exactly what you mean here. Are you just referring to buying duchies until your opponent doesn't answer (and breaks the PPR)? I think this is one the weakest aspects of my game; closing in a 'safely' in mirrors. Especially when my deck is something that's not resistant to bloat (duchies).

11
Game Reports / Re: University of City-building
« on: June 18, 2011, 12:52:44 pm »
Another fun University game. My opponent made the perfect pile-emptying move...

...or so he thought.  8)
Universities w/ Vineyards is a lot of fun. One of the rare board elements that will make me consider going multiple potions.

12
Dominion Isotropic / Re: Decline of civility on isotropic?
« on: June 17, 2011, 05:47:22 pm »
I've participated in a lot of online communities over the years, and I picked up "gl" and "gg" on Isotropic because that's what this community does. I agree with Blaeu, I say "gg" as another way of saying "no hard feelings" when I lose and as a nod of respect when I win. I have left games without saying "gg" in the past, usually when the opponent did or said something I thought was spiteful.

You may as well disdain the people at work who say "Hi" as you pass them in the hallway.

13
Dominion Isotropic / Re: Decline of civility on isotropic?
« on: June 17, 2011, 05:01:22 pm »
Generally if I'm going to quit because I'm getting my ass handed to me so much its not worth it, I'll say something along the lines of "You've got this one, mind if I resign?" That seems like the polite thing to do to me.
Has anyone asked you to stay? Sometimes I'd like to see where my deck goes (but I'd never ask someone to stay in a game where they're obviously not having fun). For that reason, I tend to stay and play out games even when it's clear I'm going to lose.

14
Game Reports / Better than I imagined.
« on: June 17, 2011, 04:55:16 pm »
Here's a game I played where I started off with a plan, and it ended up working even better than I could have imagined.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201106/17/game-20110617-125226-3e037f53.html

Basically, I wanted to grab a tactician and forge to quickly trash down to a very slim deck. However, I picked up a bishop to avoid getting behind on tie breaker points. Once my deck was trimmed down to just golds, I fed the forge to the bishop and a five card deck of (Bishop, gold, gold, gold, x) presented itself.

15
Treasure Map is number one for me, simply because it's "easy to get" for my opponents, and can win them the game outright if they're lucky.

Possession is a close 2nd for much the same reason. My current possession strategy is basically to make sure my deck never gets 'too good.' Rush green, try to pad my lead while intentionally cluttering my deck by taking duchies earlier than I otherwise would. It just generally makes for a very unsatisfying game, win or lose. Multiplayer is even worse because the value of Possession varies depending on the strength of the opponent behind you.

16
With +actions available, HT has pretty good synergy with minion . HT's drawback of discard is mitigated by minion's redraw. You could add HTs to your own deck instead of worrying about being countered by them.

17
Dominion General Discussion / Re: General Deck Compositions
« on: June 15, 2011, 05:38:10 pm »
Also when debating whether to trash or make a bigger buy, consider how important the card vs trashing is to your current deck.

An exaggerated example would be buying a King's Court (which does best in a action-heavy, low clutter deck) vs. buying a Bank where those coppers would actually help you! Another example is the Turn 1 Mint-buy mentioned in another thread. "I get to trash 5 coppers on the first turn, and get a 5-card?!" However, it actually hurts you more often than not.

This is really the crux of the issue, unfortunately it's rarely this cut and dry. As you play more and more, you start to get a feel for it but I'm definitely not at a point where it's a snap decision for me and I have over 500 games logged on Isotropic.

18
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Optimal Deck Size
« on: June 15, 2011, 05:20:54 pm »
I'd say 20-25 cards is a reasonable ballpark for me, in games where I'm not intentionally bloating and don't have strong trashing available.

With a chapel deck, ending the game with 15 cards is very doable / viable. It's important to note that getting rid of bad cards is nearly as important as adding good cards.

19
Feedback / Re: Dominion Card Beneath User Name????
« on: June 15, 2011, 05:13:50 pm »
I want to know what theory's would be if he wasn't Admin. :P

20
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Using Steward's +2 coin early
« on: June 15, 2011, 03:17:35 pm »
There's a lot of factors to consider here, and to me heavily depends on the other card you opened with.

If I pick up Steward on turn 3, am I very likely to get 5$ on turn 4? If so, trash. Drawing copper, silver, estate, estate as the other four cards would make me more likely to trash as well. Heck, I could even draw 5 copper on Turn 4.

If you pick up a Mountebank on 4 and your opponent trashes instead, playing your Mountebank before their next shuffle seemingly cancels out their trashing. Witch's draw also provides the same cycling advantage your opponent gets for trashing 2 cards.

In general, with a strong $5 on the board, I'd lean towards getting the 5 cost card early but there are a lot of factors that go into the choice.

21
Game Reports / Re: A Cautionary Tale: Skipping the Witch
« on: June 15, 2011, 02:52:39 pm »
@KMueller: Going Provinces in Colony is fairly uncommon, although not unheard of. He did it to end the game before my Bishops gave me an insurmountable VP chip lead, and I picked a couple up as Bishop fodder. Don't look at that game as an example of good play. I played very poorly (as a result of picking a bad strategy form the start), and I don't feel like my opponent played particularly strong either.

As for the Sea Hag vs. Familiar, I think Shark's game is a good example of why it depends. The Cellars gave shark very good cycling and allowed the sea hag to keep up. In a vacuum, I prefer stacking  2-3 familiars to clog up their deck and stall the Sea Hag even further. Even if Familiar is the only Potion card in the kingdom, 1 Potion is less clutter than multiple Sea Hags.

22
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is the point counter cheating?
« on: June 15, 2011, 02:01:05 pm »
I think a lot of people are more 'scared' of keeping track than they really should be. For many, many games it's as easy as looking at the number of provinces remaining combined with the knowledge of how many you yourself have bought.

VP chips are on the info page.
Fairgrounds are pretty easy to calculate on the fly using the #s remaining in the kingdom piles.
For gardens, you can see the number of cards remaining in your draw pile on the info page (and I believe the rules allow you to count your draw deck at anytime). Just wait for a reshuffle and count the draw deck + 5 for your current hand.
Vinyards are probably the hardest, but still very doable... and it doesn't come up all that often.

23
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Tournament + Black Market
« on: June 15, 2011, 12:26:02 pm »
I've had an opponent resign when I pulled a KC out of the Black Market fairly early on.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110514-162527-16c1fab4.html

Tournament is really not the only card that can show up in the BM and heavily sway the game.

24
Game Reports / Re: A Cautionary Tale: Skipping the Witch
« on: June 15, 2011, 12:23:30 am »
Yeah, in the Torturer game, I actually made a conscious decision because I knew that exhausting the curses would nullify the pressure of a torturer chain. Unfortunately, he unloaded on me faster than I anticipated, and I never got the chain off the ground. All in all, it was a pretty poorly played game on my part, but all based on the decision to skip the Sea Hag.

25
Game Reports / A Cautionary Tale: Skipping the Witch
« on: June 14, 2011, 11:47:19 pm »
Whenever you're thinking about skipping over a cursing attack, think twice... and then think a third time.

I thought that with a specific plan, I could afford to skip over the Witch. My plans was to spam Bishops using the opponents curses as fodder. Instead, I gave the opponent an ultra trim deck while I struggled to keep up with the curses.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110613-214908-ca961f29.html


And that's why you don't skip cursing attacks.

I actually made a similar mistake against Sea Hag very recently. I managed a 4/4 split of the Provinces and got the tie breaking Duchy with my Torturer engine... only to lose to the -10 VP from eating the entire curse stack.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110613-171027-3e2c3ae3.html

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