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1

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Lurker

« on: January 17, 2017, 03:52:57 pm »

My experience with this is that it's very risky and probably not a good opening plan. Your opponent can also open Lurker and steal the Possession you put in the trash. If your lurkers don't cooperate and collide, you can end up with effectively dead hands.

Of course, once you have a deck that is drawing well, playing two Lurkers in a turn makes for a nice strategy.

Agreed, it is not a good opening plan for some cards (Scrying Pool being the main exception, providing non-terminal draw + loving actions + attacking opponent, I still think that is a rush), but depending on the actions and if my opponent opened first indicating a different strategy (or Potion indicating they wanted Alchemy cards themselves), I might still have my first buy be Lurker to see if they use their second turn to get one also.  Definitely a card that benefits the second player in terms of being able to see strategy and respond.  If there are only one or two Alchemy cards on the board, I might open Lurker over Potion as first player though, for its greater flexibility, not committing to the strategy and getting to see how my opponent responded--Kingdom dependent of course.

Lurker has a fun interaction with Castles, since Small Castle and Opulent Castle are both Action-Victory cards.  You can play and trash your Small Castle to gain another Castle and then regain it with Lurker--just don't leave it in the trash too long or your opponent might nab it with their own Lurker! 

Opulent Castle can also be trashed and gained with Lurker, which is helpful for getting it for the first time, and in rare cases can also make it a nice reusable target for TfB cards (TfB in general tends to make Lurker much stronger).  For example, in a recent game, trashing Opulent Castle with Apprentice became my main source of draw (+7 cards!), and then I'd just make sure to pick it back up with Lurker to use again next turn. 

That is...pretty cool actually.  Just need Apprentice to draw one Lurker to keep the Castle away from anyone else too.  And now I want to get enough Lurkers + Small Castle + draw to nab the last 2 Castles in one turn without having to buy them.

2

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Lurker

« on: January 16, 2017, 06:31:54 pm »

I felt the need to resurrect this old thread because it is lacking a combination I found important: Alchemy cards.

The ability to gain Possession, for example, without doing anything other than opening Lurker-Lurker, is a game-changer; you can possess your opponent on turn 5!  No potion necessary (for anything other than Philosopher's stone and Vineyard), not much lost and so much gained.  Given that cards with a potion cost are made to be so good that a potion buy (that does nothing else for you) might actually be worth it even if only 2-3 are on the board, being able to get those cards without that otherwise worthless treasure is pretty awesome.  (For Alchemist you may want a potion to topdeck them, but really they are gained just as easily as Labs, so you lose nothing in comparison by not having that extra ability.  Also, you do not have to curse your luck when you draw 3P aiming for Golem while there are nice 5's you could have bought if you had gone silver instead.)

Side note on a power combo: Lurker+Scrying Pool.  Open double Lurker, then trash/gain SPs while buying more Lurkers each turn.  Your SPs draw your Lurkers to gain more SPs (and avoid tripping on that extra potion card), and you quickly draw your deck while winning both piles unless your opponent is mirroring.  You should by then have 4-6 Lurkers to gain 2-3 action cards each turn that can usually be drawn and played the same turn you buy them, which can easily lead to a three-pile ending in your favour.  I would love to see this simulated, not sure how to get the log from my last game with it.

3

Game Reports / Re: Any Games with 6+ Supply Piles Empty?

« on: November 13, 2015, 05:43:13 pm »

Base Set, First Campaign, game 19 is actually good for emptying piles.  This game resulted in 10 empty piles, and since 10 Goons were in play, all (except for the curse pile) contributed to maximizing the VP directly.

Of course, the winner could just have bought a bunch of copper once the VP cards were dry, so in a strict sense only five piles had to be emptied to achieve the same score (actually one 10 VP better, since no curses).  Of course, with Chapel and Moneylender, Copper can be bought and trashed earlier on so that that pile would run out too at the end, forcing other piles to be emptied as well.  The only problem for this game in particular is the opponent would not cooperate and insisted on buying Provinces with most turns (since all those Council Rooms followed by Goons meant he was going to have a pretty nice three-card hand each time; if only I could have played a Minions just prior to the Goons play each turn!)

4

Game Reports / Any Games with 6+ Supply Piles Empty?

« on: October 16, 2015, 11:48:16 am »

I was mucking around with the first game kingdom against three bots (because, why not).  There were several times when I emptied the village and smithy piles, and then ended by gaining all the remaining VP cards on the last turn.  On a recent game, I found I had $2 left over on my last turn, and there was one cellar left, so I decided to buy it also (because, why not), leaving 6 supply piles empty, and it got me wondering.

Any one have some interesting game archives in which 6+ supply piles are empty at the end?  Preferably not just cleaning up for cleaning up sake (like I did), but where emptying each pile was helpful, directly or indirectly, in gaining more VP?  And not just in a game where that was the goal (because that is pretty easy with a few Alt-VP cards available); the more serious/challenging/death-defying odds on the last turn, the better.

5

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Max Out Green Cards (Updated)

« on: August 31, 2015, 03:32:44 pm »

You can inherit something, making your estates count for vineyards.

Doh, did not account for that.

Perhaps the last improvements... maybe.


The Kingdom:
Vineyards, Gardens, Fairground, Silk Road, Black Market, Page (Bane), Peasant, Feodum, Duke, Distant Lands, Rats, Travelling Fair, Inheritance

The Black Market: (Credit liopoil)
Young Witch, Tournament, Baker, Graverobber, Urchin, Hermit, Native Village, Marauder, Great Hall, Nobles, Island, Harem, Farmland, Tunnel, Dame Josephine, 10 other Actions

Actions: Estate ( Black Market (32), Page (30), Peasant (30), Distant Lands ( Rats (20), Ruins (10), Madman (10), Urchin (10), Prizes (4) Necropolis (1)
Total: 163 for 54pt Vineyards

Cards: Base VP (32), Base Treasure (130), Potion(16), Kingdom VP (56), Black Market (35), Page (30), Peasant (30), Rats (20), Ruins (10), Madman (10), Urchin (10), Spoils (15), Prizes (5), Shelters (3) and ( Curses
Total: 410 for 41 pt Gardens

Uniques: Base VP (4), Treasure (5), Kingdom VP (7), Black Market (26), Page (5), Peasant (5), Rats(1), Ruins (5), Madman (1), Mercenary (1), Spoils (1), Shelters (3), Prizes (5), Curse(1)
Total: 70 for 28 pt Fairgrounds

Victory cards: Base VP (32), Kingdom VP (56), Black Market VP [Dame Josephine, Island, Nobles, Great Hall, Tunnel, Farmland, Harem] (7), Overgrown Estate (1)
Total: 96 for 24 pt Silk Road

Victory Points: Vineyards (432), Gardens (328), Fairgrounds (224), Silk Road (192), Colony (80), Duke (64), Province (48), Distant Lands (32), Duchy (24), Black Market VP (13), Estate (, Curse (-8)
Total:1437

A couple things I noticed regarding your math:
I think you left Platinum out of your card count, and Feoda out of your VP total

6

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Max Out Green Cards (Updated)

« on: August 20, 2015, 11:56:28 am »

Do you want to restrict this to a 2 player game, or allow a 6 player game.  There are some major differences with 8 vs 12 cards in VP piles and the size of the Ruins / Silver piles.

(The original specifies solitaire Isotropic, which is essentially 2p rules I suppose?)

My initial calculations were for the 2p rules.  I have not done the 4p or 6p versions, but would welcome an analysis that includes them as well.

This isn't complete yet, but here are my initial calculations for the "value" of each type of card you could make up the kingdom from.

This was my approach as well, though in my analysis one card had a higher value than you give it for some reason

7

Puzzles and Challenges / Max Out Green Cards (Updated)

« on: August 19, 2015, 04:14:59 pm »

Since the last time this issue was investigated was several years ago (see here), and much has happened since then, I thought I would resurrect this topic.

Largest possible score for a player in a game that does not use VP tokens?

I have mucked around with this for a while, and while I am not positive of the answer, I believe that I can establish a lower bound of 1535.  I would enjoy being proven wrong.

To limit the craziness, keep the Black Market deck to 25, following the standards of online play.