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1

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: First puzzle of my career!

« on: March 18, 2012, 04:37:29 am »

Your hand is 4 or 5 treasure maps and there's 2 empty piles and only 4 golds left and you're behind with no other ways to get rid of the maps?

You have a Golem (technically a terminal action) and 4 coppers or whatever, and cards like menagerie and library in your deck?

Your hand is 4 secret chambers and you're sick of isotropic asking if you want to react?

Your hand is Mandarin and 4 coppers and you'd rather not have one on your next turn?

I went deep and I'm stumped.

2

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Isotropic pictures?

« on: January 31, 2012, 05:02:18 pm »

Bureaucrat is a magic card too, called Bureaucracy: http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=9778

Militia is also a magic card called Volunteer Militia: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=6491

3

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Most Skill-Intensive Cards

« on: January 10, 2012, 08:52:59 am »

A card I find myself vetoing very frequently for exactly this reason is Forge. I never had a good enough grip on how to cheese province parity via forging, so I always just ban it. I think it's a very skill-heavy card though, since you have to navigate tons of immediate AND long-term decisions every time you play it.

4

Dominion General Discussion / Re: DominionStrategy YouTube channel

« on: December 30, 2011, 05:09:45 am »

I tried making a couple videos earlier tonight (of me playing vs. jonts26, who I'd like to thank very much for his cooperation). For the most part, they turned out crappy. There's only one I'd be willing to upload, and the audio in it is horrible to the point where it becomes unwatchable, but the game itself is surprisingly full of interesting decisions (despite being kind of a boring board), so I'm looking into re-recording a new audio commentary track over it. I need to pick up a higher quality microphone and figure out how to splice new audio onto existing video.

One thing I did learn from my attempts at making videos is that they capture a LOT of strategy elements that are extremely difficult or impossible to spot in logs. In isotropic logs, since it's a start-to-finish text recap, it kind of looks like all the players are super confident in their decisions, but in the heat of battle there's a ton of deliberation. Also, if you're playing a combo deck with a draw engine, the log captures the first 5 cards you start with that turn, but not any of the ones you draw, so after that it's hard to spot the order the cards are played in in big turns, or what a player's discard options are (with warehouse or inn or whatever). Also it's hard to pull from the logs information about cards the players intentionally didn't play, or if the size of the deck/discard pile influenced their decisions, etc. A video can only capture one player's window into all of these elements, but in my opinion it's still better than reading a log.

The bottom line is that even though I don't have a video to show (yet), there is definitely tons of merit to making them and watching them, so if you're thinking about doing it and you think you have something to offer strategy-wise I encourage you to do it. I used two pieces of software in my attempts to make videos (SMrecorder to record, and Avidemux to edit) and they were both free, so cost shouldn't be an issue (unless you don't have a good microphone like me).

For the record, I think since isotropic logs are available, exposure to the public should not be a concern when it comes to asking for your opponent's permission to record a game. HOWEVER, I think the recorder should ask the opponent(s) for permission every time because recorded games WILL take longer, if they are good, since they should contain lots of pauses for deliberation and commentary (and if all I want to do is blast a few quick games I should have the option of avoiding that).

5

Dominion General Discussion / Re: My love and hate relationship with Dominion

« on: December 28, 2011, 02:24:42 am »

I like posts like these. If you've ever read the twoplustwo forums (poker strategy), the posters have a practice where they make their 1000th post, called Pooh-Bah posts (because that's when their forum title changes to Pooh-Bah), a long post bearing wisdom that they've accumulated on their poker journey. I always liked the idea of making a post like that about Dominion on this forum (well, except I haven't hit any kind of landmark besides being a lv40).

6

Dominion General Discussion / Re: DominionStrategy YouTube channel

« on: December 27, 2011, 12:15:53 pm »

These are pretty nice. Kinda makes me want to make some videos.

7

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Greatest Isotropic Moments of 2011

« on: December 22, 2011, 12:10:12 pm »

Here's a pretty funny game I just played.

   — modillen's turn 17 —
   modillen plays a Trader.
   ... trashing a Province.
   modillen plays a Copper and 2 Silvers.
   modillen buys a Trader.
   (modillen draws: 2 Coppers and 3 Silvers.)

It was a Gardens-Trader game, and the Silver pile actually ran out. I think my opponent was on autopilot and didn't realize this, so he trashed his Province for no reason. (He did it again a few turns later, trashing a Gold for nothing when he could have bought a Duchy.)

Even if there were enough Silvers left, I don't think this is a good play because a Province is guaranteed 6 points, whereas trading it for 8 Silvers gives you an expectation of 0.7 points per Garden. He only had 3 Gardens, but you'd need 9 Gardens to make this play profitable points-wise. Still, I got a kick out of it.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/22/game-20111222-090033-373e94bf.html

8

2011 / Re: Schedule and Results, Part II

« on: December 21, 2011, 02:25:46 pm »

G3 of chwhite vs. Exclams is one of the sickest games I've ever seen. Every decision by chwhite is so efficient. I'm really impressed.

9

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cards You Horribly Misjudged

« on: December 20, 2011, 11:33:04 pm »

I am gonna go with Ambassador, not once, but twice.

Obviously when I first started playing the game with my friends I thought it was a boring card that didn't do anything. Then my friends and I all had the Steward revolution and started to open Steward/Steward, and realized that it wasn't bad to open two terminals like that if the effect you got from them was that good. Once I figured out how powerful Ambassador was, I started to open games with Ambassador/Ambassador.

THEN the second time around, I misjudged the best way to play Ambassador. I feel kind of dumb posting this and letting the secret out, but most of the time I play a game vs. someone and we both open Ambassador/Ambassador, and then on their first Ambassador turn, they return 1 estate and play 3 coppers to buy a silver, I'm really happy. Whenever I play Ambassador, all I want to do is get my deck down to two Ambassadors and 3 coppers, THEN buy a silver, then get rid of 2 more coppers and buy another silver. Then hopefully play Ambassador and give them a copper every turn for the rest of the game unless I'm buying a province.

I remember when I got the most important Ambassador lesson. I think I was around level 25, and I played vs. someone who was in the 30s at the time. We both opened Ambassador/Ambassador, got really thin decks. Then I started to buy money, and he bought... another Ambassador. I thought this was absurd. There was a village in this game and some card drawing card. He built a deck that could draw itself with actions to spare, and spent a few turns giving me a bunch of coppers. I might have got to 3 provinces before my deck became full of coppers and unplayable. It was an easy victory for him from there.

So, first I misjudged why Ambassador is useful. THEN, I misjudged just how powerful and useful it is. I almost never veto it because unlike some of the other swingy, irritating attacks, I feel like Ambassador is a high skill card.

10

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Possession+Scrying Pool bug

« on: December 20, 2011, 12:42:09 am »

I know that with Duchess, it reveals the top cards of each players' deck all in the same brick of text up top, with one player's in italics and the other player's in regular, so something like:


You reveal a Copper.
You reveal an Estate.

and you have to decipher which one it's referring to. Is it not like that with Scrying Pool?

11

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Evaluate your best and your worst board

« on: December 18, 2011, 12:57:33 pm »

Here's my "best" board (in order of my win rate):

Scheme
Goons
Fool's Gold
Spice Merchant
Black Market
Governor
Scrying Pool
Ghost Ship
Transmute
Possession

On this board I'd open Potion/Black market and try to spike some villages and load up on Scrying Pools. My next action buy would be Spice Merchant, and I'd try to have Goons be the only other terminal in my deck if I couldn't get a village.

If you cut Black Market, the next card down for me is Quarry, which makes this board harder to evaluate. I feel like it makes Scrying Pool less viable because there's no actions that generate money (except Goons which is terminal). I might open Spice Merchant/Fool's Gold and try to rush Fool's Golds with a Goons to cap it off.

Kind of disappointing board. Scrying Pool is my favorite card in Dominion and it's not that great on either of these boards, and I also hate Fool's Gold and Possession and have no idea how they're on there.

My "worst" board:

Contraband
Wishing Well
Throne Room
Jack of All Trades
Merchant Ship
Caravan
Tunnel
Crossroads
Stables
Island

(Archivist was at the bottom but I don't even know what it is so I cut it.)

I mean, I guess Jack of All Trades is the fastest deck. It doesn't look like any of the other possible strats are both faster and more reliable. If you cut Jack, the next card up is Silk Road, which makes some kind of Crossroads 3-pile strategy possible, but is still kind of hurt by no +buy (except Contraband). Maybe the strat on that board is to buy Contraband, and your opponent can't block you from all the stuff you wanna buy (silks, islands, tunnels) so you just buy around what they call.

My boards suck, what a let down.

12

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Greatest Isotropic Moments of 2011

« on: December 12, 2011, 01:39:47 pm »

Here is my Goons record.

   WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE plays a Goons.
   ... getting +1 buy and +$2.
   ... steelrabbit discards 17 cards.

It came after a mega-turn and he took so long to click all of his cards that I thought he was disconnecting on me.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111026-165432-417df630.html

I kind of wish I had an interesting game to post that didn't involve King's Court, but oh well.

13

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?

« on: December 10, 2011, 10:45:20 am »

A bit off topic, but might be related: How many of you +40s are competitive Magic players? I used to play quite a lot and my best results were 3rd and 5th at nationals and one feature match at a GP, but whenever I played against the top players (like Ruel) I got a similar feeling I sometimes get when I play Dominion against a +45: "I can't ever beat this guy, he's outplaying me on all fronts"

I made level 4 in the pro player's club this year.

14

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?

« on: December 09, 2011, 03:40:21 pm »

The guys that I'm scared to play against are the ones that can identify and build engines better than me. It's really easy to buy a Smithy and money and get to 4 provinces in like 15 turns, but when the board has Smithy, Village, Market, etc. it's hard for me to know which pieces to buy and when and how many to shave a turn or two off my share of the provinces.

One of the best engine builders I've ever played against is Ben Warden. Obi Wan Bonogi is also a sick engine builder.

15

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

« on: December 07, 2011, 06:17:33 pm »

In the Witch division (3 vs. 30), WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE beats Maxwell 4-2.

Game 1: WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE 43, Maxwell 42
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/07/game-20111207-133434-af1a2183.html
I open Militia planning on going mostly money with one or two more terminals, Maxwell opens Bridge and goes for a Remodel-based strategy. Really close game, could have gone either way.

Game 2: WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE 36, Maxwell 35
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/07/game-20111207-135029-2e3565d8.html
We both open Baron/Loan. Maxwell tries to build a straightforward money deck while I go for a gimmicky Tactician/Secret Chamber deck. I get my engine going just in time and win by the skin of my teeth again.

Game 3: WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE 41, Maxwell 27
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/07/game-20111207-140049-b0c11efb.html
Once we veto the attacks out of the way, the board becomes kind of boring. We both open Silver/Steward and go for the same basic strategy. Maxwell gets 5 a little bit too often in the early game, so I end up winning with a more gold-dense deck.

Game 4: WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE 41, Maxwell 42
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/07/game-20111207-141641-9037d8b8.html
I leave Jack of All Trades in the veto phase, hoping Maxwell doesn't know how good it is yet (since I didn't know myself until a couple days ago). Unfortunately for me he does, so we both open with Jack. I go for a more straightforward money DoubleJack deck, while Maxwell sprinkles in a couple more actions like Salvager and Tactician. I buy 4 provinces pretty quickly but then my deck stalls out and I never see more than $7 for the rest of the game, so Maxwell's more versatile deck is able to take mine over with a critical Salvager turn.

Game 5: WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE 34, Maxwell 41
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/07/game-20111207-143456-837eef89.html
I open Silver/Chapel, Maxwell opens Venture/Chapel. As soon as he buys a Tunnel I realize what's happening and rush to change my strategy to that, but always being a turn behind hurt me and I end up losing to his deck with more Tunnels.

Game 6: WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE 33, Maxwell 10
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201112/07/game-20111207-145347-a0b9546b.html
Ambassador game. I open with two Ambassadors while Maxwell opens with Ambassador/Spice Merchant. I struggle to build my deck early since I'm focused on making it a machine while Maxwell buys money and quickly buys 3 provinces, but eventually my machine takes over and I'm able to gunk up his deck enough to make sure the rest of the game is smooth sailing.

Thanks very much to Maxwell for a close, intense series.

16

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

« on: November 28, 2011, 08:33:43 pm »

I finished my match against Aitchcan (seeds 3 v. 62 in the Witch division) earlier today. I won the match 4-1. Thanks very much to Aitchcan for the games.

Game 1 (Aitchcan)
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/28/game-20111128-141805-2533bd4d.html

Game 2 (WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE)
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/28/game-20111128-142403-c5b75e24.html

Game 3 (WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE)
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/28/game-20111128-143138-44c78129.html

Game 4 (WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE)
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/28/game-20111128-144521-331c8ceb.html

Game 5 (WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE)
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/28/game-20111128-145825-7e62422f.html

17

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Your nicknames for Dominion cards

« on: November 28, 2011, 04:10:29 pm »

And of course Young Witch is sung like the beginning of "YMCA".  I'm pretty sure everyone's done that, though.

This reminds me, we usually call Young Witch "Young Money." I guess a lot of our references are from pop music.

18

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why can't i get any better?

« on: November 28, 2011, 03:48:37 pm »

All of this general advice is pretty good. Here's my contribution.

Try to think about EVERYTHING. Things you wouldn't normally think about. Some decisions that you thought were super obvious, might not be so obvious. Try not to autopilot.

One example of this (and it's something that I think really elevated my game) is manipulating your shuffles. For example, it's the early-mid game and you have a hand that's like, Village-Witch-Copper-Silver-Silver. You play the Village, and then the Witch, and you draw Copper & Estate & Village, and you have no more cards left in your deck. It's hard to resist the temptation to just cycle that Village, but by doing that you'll trigger a nasty reshuffle that will blank TWO of your Villages, your awesome Witch, and the Gold that you'll probably buy until your next shuffle, and for what? What card could you draw that would drastically change what you're going to do/buy this turn? This is a pretty basic example, but hopefully the idea behind it is pretty clear: think critically about how your current turn affects your future turns.

Sorry if this was already obvious, but this is one aspect that really elevated my game. I always thought Navigator was pretty bad / unplayable, until I got a good grip on the deck manipulation aspect of the game. Now I love opening Navigator/Silver and using Navigator to discard upcoming draws that don't result in me buying a Gold.

19

Dominion General Discussion / Your nicknames for Dominion cards

« on: November 28, 2011, 03:04:02 pm »

When I play live Dominion with my friends, we come up with all kinds of goofy nicknames for the cards, and I'm curious to see if anyone else has any. Here are some of the ones we use.

The earliest one we had that I remember was for Wharf. Whenever my friend would play it he would say "wharf to the bridge." I thought that was awesome and that's how I got my isotropic username.

Smugglers is always "snugglers."

Spy is always pronounced "spee."

Pearl diver is affectionately referred to as "muff diver."

When Cornucopia first came out, I got Horse Traders and Hunting Party confused, so I kept calling Horse Traders "Horse Party." Eventually that name stuck and so now we just always call it Horse Party.

One I thought of recently that I really like is calling Menagerie "Nicki Menagerie." I'm thinking of changing my username to this. It's the kind of username that would make me laugh every time I see it, like "BarneyRabble" or "occupy grand market."

Over the weekend my friends and I got to play with Hinterlands for the first time, and got to start renaming those cards. Highway is played by saying "Life is a highway," in reference to the Tom Cochrane song, Spice Merchant is now "Spice Girls," and Crossroads is usually announced by saying "See you at the crossroads," in reference to the Bone Thugz n Harmony song.

Does anyone else have any goofy nicknames like these?

20

2011 / Re: 2011 DominionStrategy.com Championships Registration

« on: November 21, 2011, 11:03:54 pm »

1) WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE
2) GMT -5 (EST)

21

Game Reports / Re: Once You Go Green...

« on: September 30, 2011, 04:55:58 am »

This game really stood out to me too. I definitely showed it to a couple other people myself. I'm only half surprised to see a forum thread about it.

I'm really bad on boards like this, where the potential for a big turn or two could potentially be faster than a big money strategy. I don't have a good grip on which cards to prioritize. I think you made better decisions than me and that's why you won, but it probably isn't hard to do that on a board where there's a ton of combo pieces and I don't really have any kind of benchmark for which ones to get in which order and I'm just buying whatever feels useful (which hopefully explains the $16 Village Coppersmith turn).

I still stand by my opening though. On a board where I really only want to combo, I don't want any silvers getting in the way and having a $3 combo piece makes that decision easy. If the combo deck is unplayable (or not as good as a more straightforward strategy), then my opening is bad. Actually I didn't even realize that Chancellor was on that board and was another good combo piece until the middle of the game, so maybe opening Chancellor/Coppersmith is better for the combo deck. I still don't know what the actual best strategy for that board is. Either way, that was a really interesting board and it was one of the most fun games of Dominion I've played on isotropic (even if I did lose).

Oh and to the guy who embargoed the alchemists before I could get more than one: f u