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Messages - BadAssMutha

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51
Game Reports / Re: I Need To Rant
« on: March 10, 2014, 02:47:47 pm »
Shanty Town won't usually help from a draw perspective, so they can't be ignored in computing the odds. For my estimation, I'm just considering the odds of not getting a Scrying Pool in your hand, drawing from 19 cards (the deck minus the cantrip Grand Markets). This is the same as silverspawn's computation, but with 5 added to the numerators and denominators, and gives about 17%. The 5 Shanty Towns are needed for the +actions, but they can be a bit of a liability in drawing your deck.

Given that you DO have a Scrying Pool in your last hand, you get especially screwed by not drawing another SP in your next 5 cards. Your 4 remaining SPs all happen to be beneath the potion - probably somewhere around a 5-10% chance.

52
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Activation Cards
« on: March 03, 2014, 04:32:31 pm »
Interesting concept. It's almost like a little Native Village that keeps a single card (with a particular power) that can be retrieved at any time for 1 action. I like that some of the activation powers are good, and some are "bad", but balanced by the on-play effect. When I first saw Boomtown, I wondered why you'd ever want to activate it, but you have to in order to shuffle it back in and get the excellent on-play effect again.

I imagine you'll usually want to use an activation power as soon as possible, so you can play and activate many times. Otherwise, you could run into the Seaside issue where the duration cards get played quite a bit less than other cards, since they're staying out and missing the shuffle.

53
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: "In games using this" effects
« on: February 24, 2014, 09:24:47 am »
Quote
$3 Action
+1$
Trash a card from your hand. You may gain two cards with the total cost up to the trashed card.
_______________
In games using this, when you trash a Province, gain a Duchy.

So... you trash a Province, and get what exactly? Just a Duchy? A Duchy and up to a $3? Two cards totaling up to $8 AND a Duchy?

54
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A Simple trasher with a ontrash setup rule
« on: February 20, 2014, 09:15:43 am »
Not a bad idea, and it gets especially interesting with self-trashing cards, as you point out. On the other hand, if this is the only trasher on the board, I doubt I'll want to use it on most $4s, and very unlikely on anything costing more than that. Salvaging a card costing $4 gets me $4, apprenticing it gets me +4 cards, bishoping it gives me +$1 and +3 VP. Charburning a $4 cost card gets me $2 and gives out a curse - this seems a little weak, especially since you'll have to go through the entire charburnable pile to give out all the curses. Spending $4 now to give out a curse later with a $2 rebate doesn't seem that great to me.

It also seems a little odd that this could be a pretty game-warping card (if it lands on Feast or MV or some such) even if no one buys it. Maybe a Trash token should get added to a pile of your choice when you buy a Charburn? This means curses don't fly until someone actually buys one of these, and the token will avoid landing on something unlikely to be trashed like King's Court or Wharf. I don't think having Trash tokens on more than one pile would affect things too much, and would probably make it useful in more situations.

55
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Procession logs
« on: February 12, 2014, 09:19:14 am »
Quote
Quote
It's use is limited, but it really shines with one shots (Makes Festival great), as well as a lot of Dark ages cards. Personally I think it's good to turn early game cards like Sage into more useful cards, but I never feel like you need more than 1 or 2 Processions.

that's definitely wrong imo... if you go allout for it for it you need lots and lots of processions, because the ultimate goal is always to procession - procession - drawer - procession - continue a turn.

I agree that you'll almost certainly need more than 2 Processions if you're playing it right, but you might not need more than 2 or 3 at a time for much of the game. Your deck is constantly in flux with Procession, and you should probably be Processioning Processions into $5s, and then replacing those by Processioning $3s into more Processions. By the end of the game, you may go through 5 or more Processions, but only wind up with a couple in your deck.

56
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Procession logs
« on: February 11, 2014, 09:28:46 am »
The key to remember about Procession is that it plays a somewhat like Throne Room, in that it's obviously no good unless you have action cards you want to play multiple times, and can actually draw those actions with the Procession in hand. The "upgrade" ability can be either be a great way to increase the overall value of your deck, but it can be a liability when all you have in hand are $5s or $6s you don't want to trash. This where Procession really differs from TR - usually the good $5s and $6s are exactly what you want to target with TR, but that's not the case anymore with Procession. Having useful actions at consecutive price points ($3, $4, $5) is a must for Procession, so it can be quite board-dependent (like Develop). A source of +buy is also quite useful for picking up cheap components that you can later Procession into better stuff.

Here's a sort of odd game where I Double Tactician into a treasureless deck with Steward, Rogue, and Embargo as my source of coin. The Tacs are necessary in order to not draw the Processions dead, and the good supply of +$2 at almost any price point allows me to continue Processioning productively. The upgrade ability also allows me to get around some embargoes.
http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130923/log.50db96a8e4b0a3565c365932.1379978068805.txt

57
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Counter to pirate ship?
« on: February 09, 2014, 04:23:04 am »
Cantrip actions get a little better with Pirate Ship on the board, since as pops mentioned, they'll decrease the hit rate of Pirate Ship. If it's a board with +buys and some cheap cards, spamming cheap cantrips can be a good way to lower the odds that your good treasures will get hit. The cantrips won't affect your ability to draw your treasures, but it will make it harder for your opponent to trash them. In some cases, losing a Gold or even a Silver can mean more than the $1 extra the opponent's Pirate Ship is worth. This is especially true if it hits a Platinum. The more non-treasure cards you have, the better off you are, so put extra buys to good use.

58
Dominion General Discussion / Re: How important is cycling?
« on: February 05, 2014, 02:45:35 pm »
Quote
So one point is, that we really need an early acceleration in order to buy many $5 or $6 cards. Question is, whether you can afford one more turn before doing so, since cellar let's you skip some (hopefully bad) turns later on.

Usually, the answer to this question is no. Getting to $5 on turns 3/4 can be very important, especially if there are powerful cards out (cursers, trashers, etc). If you wait "one more turn" to pick up a card that helps you get that $5, now you might not be able to play it until turn 5 or beyond. You won't get the benefit as early, which means you might still have a hard time coming up with more $5s. If the $5 is an attack, you've missed hurting your opponent early on, which is better than later. "Acceleration" is a great word for this - if you don't hit the gas right away, your opponent could pull away, leaving you to sift through your mediocre deck and unable to catch up. Get the good cards first, then worry about sifting to find them.

59
I agree with you on all points except for 6. I just don't get why saying "gg" first after winning can be considered bad manners. Usually, I'll only say it if the game actually was "g", and I intend it as an acknowledgement of my opponent's skill. I'm not congratulating myself on my own win, and I don't necessarily expect my opponent to agree with me. To me, even at it's worst, "gg" is just a meaningless platitude that people toss out there without much thought, like the handshake and gg at the end of a little league game. The only time I could imagine taking issue with a gg is if it was in fact a bg - one lost due to misclicks, or getting railed by the only Mountebank in the Black Market after turn 3.

60
Steward is a tricky card to learn to trash with. It usually comes down to either getting the +$2 and buying a decent $4 or $5 card this turn, or trashing 2 cards and buying nothing this turn. It can be really hard to see why filtering 2 bad cards out is better than adding 1 good card. As you say, the benefit is a lot more obvious with Chapel, where you're just devoting your whole turn to getting rid of your hand, and there's not as much temptation to not trash with it since it won't improve your hand otherwise.

61
Dominion General Discussion / Re: New Player!
« on: January 10, 2014, 11:50:31 am »
Some good tips here, and I'll add my two cents.

Balance your terminal actions (ones with no +actions) with your villages (cards with +2 actions, and possibly more). Oftentimes, I see new players buying a bunch of terminals that they wind up drawing together and can't play, or on the other end, buy a bunch of villages when they have no use for the extra actions. Villages and terminals should be around 1:1 in your deck, with a couple extra villages perhaps if they're terminals that draw cards (drawing dead is a waste of both a card in your hand, as well as that action play for the shuffle you're in).

Opportunity cost is a huge factor. Think about what you're NOT buying this turn, and why your purchase is a better option. Silver can be a good choice if you find yourself with too many terminals and no way to line up an engine.

Watch out for when you shuffle. Anything you've bought in the past few turns doesn't usually come into play until after your next shuffle, so sometimes it can be good to get to the bottom of the deck quicker. Conversely, if you have all your good cards in play, it may be better to hold off shuffling your deck of junk and ruing your bad "luck" for the next few turns.

You'll get a feel for when to buy VP cards as you learn the game. Usually, you want to wait until half the Provinces are gone before going for the Duchies, but this can depend on how resilient you think your deck is. If you know you have a good deck with a few Golds, and are at the top of your shuffle, you can pick up a few extra VP here and there without it affecting you too much. But sometimes, even if you're down by a Province, you need to fix the problem that made you down in the first place, rather than making your deck worse with small VP cards.

Finally, have an idea of what your opponent's deck is capable of. Is it better than mine, or comparable, and why? Were those back-to-back Province turns lucky draws, or can he sustain that pace? It can really help you to not panic when you see your opponent get a few good turns in a row, if you know that the rest of his deck is therefore full of crap. This is also important in terms of knowing how many buys your opponent can muster for a 3-pile ending, as well as knowing if you really do need to go after those Duchies.

62
Dominion Articles / Re: Butcher
« on: December 14, 2013, 10:32:02 am »
This isn't really a strategy question, but can anyone justify why Butcher gains a card up to the cost of the trashed card + coins spent, not exactly the amount? I can't think of many cases where you'd want to Butcher down (although maybe you're Butchering Gold into Duchy because you have to obey PPR). As is, Butcher can't just get rid of coppers, but I think it'd be fair to be able to do so if you spent 1 coin token (barring Poor House or cost-reducers, of course).

When I first started using Butcher, I made the big mistakes of thinking trashing was mandatory, and thinking it was "exactly" and not "up to". It seemed like a really good card, but I never got it to behave as well as I thought it might...

63
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Donald X on Rebuild
« on: December 12, 2013, 11:37:45 am »
We've talked a lot about Rebuild often completely dominating whatever kingdom it shows up in. In what (if any) situations can Rebuild be safely ignored?

64
Dominion General Discussion / Re: What if King's Court cost $3?
« on: December 11, 2013, 03:09:20 pm »
There are way too many good $4s that would be just outrageous if you could play them 3 times on your third turn. KC + Cutpurse, KC + Sea Hag, KC + Marauder, KC + Young Witch would all be pretty devastating if you could connect them on your first shuffle. I wonder if the power of these combos would outweigh the unlikeliness of connecting the KC and the terminal - it's rare that Throne Room/X is the correct open, but would an extra play of the terminal change that, so that that KC/X is the correct play?

With KC at $3, you probably ought to shoot to pick up multiple on a single turn, in almost any kingdom with any kind of +buy, virtual or actual. Trying to drive the KC pile from the start doesn't help your deck at all, and is probably slower than using the KCs to your advantage in most cases.

65
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Donald X on Rebuild
« on: December 11, 2013, 02:57:12 pm »
Quote
Ninja'd by BadAssMutha, more or less.  I disagree with his advice about buying Estates though, I think you usually don't want to do that.

You're probably right that it's usually the case that you don't need/want another Estate. It can be something worth keeping an eye on, though - I know I looked foolish the first few times I tried a Rebuild deck, and tried to go Estate -> Duchy by naming Duchy, but didn't have anymore Estates to Rebuild. If your deck is out of Estates with at least 3 Duchies left in the pile, Estate may be the way to go with <$5. You'll probably get a chance to Rebuild it, and it could win you the Duchy split. However, if the Estate doesn't get Rebuilt, it becomes a liability. It can cause you to waste Rebuild plays either by naming Estate and Rebuilding Province -> Province, or by naming Province and having to Rebuild Estate -> Estate (which is even more of a waste).

66
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Donald X on Rebuild
« on: December 11, 2013, 10:37:54 am »
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So, having played very little Dark Ages due to no more Iso... how do you play Rebuild anyway?

Get Rebuild as quickly as possible. Turn Estates into Duchies (name Duchy for Rebuild) while buying more Rebuilds (usually around 3 total). As Duchies run out, you can either pick up another Estate if you can turn it into a Duchy, or just buy a Duchy instead of a Rebuild. You need at least 4 of the Duchies, if you get 5, you've basically won the game. Now turn Duchies into Provinces (name Province) at your leisure. The Duchy split is super-important since it's usually the only thing you can Rebuild into Province, so definitely Rebuild Estate into Duchy before doing Duchy to Province. At $5 or more either buy Duchy or Rebuild, with less, buy a couple of Silvers to start, then any non-terminal sifter (Warehouse is great, Cellar is OK, things like Spice Merchant can help you clear out junk copper).

67
Help! / Re: I suck (Goons game)
« on: December 11, 2013, 08:27:08 am »
Quote
I find Menagerie defense against Goons a less than stellar option with all those nasty Coppers and Estates.

I mean, if you have EECC-M, you discard EC, draw back up to 5 and have what? 4 Coppers?

Remodel is also kind of meh, sure remodeling Estates is nice, but with Coppers in hand it's just a dead card. It won't come into the picture until later for me.

I think the rush to Goons IS important, mainly because of Goons' +Buy.
You want to build a draw deck eventually so having Goons to load up on Villages and Smithies is pretty nice.

I think Menagerie is pretty much always a stellar counter to Goons - you should be able get the +3 cards quite regularly. I would rather have EECCM, discard to ECM, then draw up ECCCC, rather than just have EECC Silver. With the menagerie, I have successfully filtered 5 coppers though my hand as opposed to just 2. Menagerie vs. Goons lets you trade two bad cards and the Menagerie for three potentially good cards.

If you do go heavy on Menageries, Remodeling all the Estates too early could hurt. You probably want to keep at least one or two to help your diversity, Remodeling coppers instead. I wonder if there's a potential for a savvy Embargo play; it would take some skill to identify your opponent's strategy and react. A curse could actually help the Menageries in the long run, and you might get your opponent to think twice about picking up certain cards.

Getting the first Goons is nice, but usually the attack is more important than the buy the first few times your play it. Without Menagerie, it can really make getting to $6 yourself a pain. I agree that the extra buy is very important on an engine board with lots of cheap components, but not necessarily as important to get before your opponent.



As for strategy tips, my advice is to play as many Goons as often as possible. e makes good points about the power of drawing. Remodeling Fortress is always good. You don't need to buy more treasure, especially Copper (until late in the game, or when you line up 3+ Goons). The extra one VP now isn't worth seeing that junk card for another 20 turns.

68
Quote
Harvest is a good sifter of junk if you know the top of your deck.  Prime example: Apothecary.  It takes the crap apothecary leaves behind and turns it into money, and opens up your next turn so it isn't crap.  Plus it can help give you that extra couple $ you need to get to 8 with your apothecary deck.  Apart from deck inspection though, it's not great...

I don't think Harvest is that great a combo with deck inspection - are you really gonna forego playing it if you don't know the top of your deck? If not, knowing what's on top gets you practically nothing. I guess Apothecary can be useful to pull matching Coppers out of the next 4 cards, but that's about it. The cards it leaves behind might be dead VP or curses, but there's also a good chance that it's actions or other $, in which case you're not sifting junk. Even if you are, you usually wind up with multiple copies of the junk cards, meaning your Harvest makes less money. If Apothecary is working well, you should be drawing mostly coppers anyway (leaving you with no deck inspection), and if you don't draw any coppers, then the reordering it gets you doesn't affect Harvest at all. I think Cartographer might be a better example of useful deck inspection for Harvest, since you can just discard whatever duplicates you have directly. I can't even think of other deck inspection cards that let you see/discard multiple cards, so it seems the applications are limited.

69
Quote
Harvest. No one uses it.

I think Harvest utilization is low, but I also think that's where it should be. It's not a good $5 early on, and by the time it's making you good money you should probably just buy a gold instead. When it's a terminal $1 or $2, it's terrible. Even as a terminal gold, it's pretty middling. It's tough to rely on it for +$4, and when it does show up, you wish you had a +buy with it.

As for my opinion on most underused cards, I might go with Jack of All Trades (for myself at least). I know it's highly regarded, but still I consistently find it to be a surprisingly fast strategy on a lot of boards, and often regret passing it up.

70
I love a good 3-pile win - it can take a lot of skill to see it coming, and to realize exactly what you need to leave behind so that your opponent doesn't get the opportunity.

The only wins I consider "bad" in Dominion are inferior strategies that win due to shuffle luck. I'm not talking about a mirror match swinging one way or the other, or even strategies that are comparable in their win rates. I'm talking about losing to people who open Village for no apparent reason, or buy a potion on the first turn when only Possession is on the board. Low-percentage strategies can be the right move in some 3+ player games (especially if you go last), but I don't play a whole lot of those. I understand that even a great strategy will lose to a Lucky Chancellor from time to time, but it just irks me when it happens.

71
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Things I've learned recently
« on: December 04, 2013, 12:01:48 pm »
Your point about reshuffles is so, so important. By triggering a reshuffle at certain times and holding off at others, you can make your draw deck considerably better (or worse) than your entire deck as a whole. Knowing which is which requires some experience and just a little card counting. Generally, try to shuffle when good cards are in the discard and bad cards are in your hand.

Another point about shuffling is the timing of a buy. If you trigger a reshuffle this turn, whatever you buy will have to wait until the next reshuffle to come into play (unless there's Watchtower or Royal Seal or some such). This is more important when your deck is large and reshuffles are infrequent, and also with attack cards which are better to play early and often. It's important to think about how much you need the extra buying power from the draw that will trigger the reshuffle - similar to your comment about drawing dead. You have to consider the opportunity cost in terms of your next turn. With a hand of Lab, 3 Copper and a Silver and 1 card left in the draw, I recently decided to not play the Lab and get a decent $5 into the shuffle this round, rather than trigger the shuffle and get a $6 Gold that wouldn't come around for a few more turns.

72
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Ghost Village + Action token
« on: November 06, 2013, 09:19:33 am »
I'm going to save my Action tokens for a mega-Diadem turn!

73
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Casino: Copper-counting Victory card
« on: November 01, 2013, 01:50:50 am »
Quote
Ok, first prototype...

Casino
Cost: 5
Treasure

+1 Buy
Reveal the top three cards of your deck. +1 coin for each treasure revealed.
If you reveal three of the same treasure, you may thrash this card and play the treasures in any order.
If you reveal three differently-named treasures, you may trash this card and play one of them.
Discard any revealed treasures which were not played and put the remaining cards on top of your deck.

Unless you hit 3 treasures, this is a Woodcutter at best, and a Ruined Market at worst. Keep in mind that even in a deck that's 80% treasure, you only have about a 50-50 shot of drawing 3 treasures at the top of the deck.

If you do hit 3 treasures and don't trash, it's +1 buy +$3, which is probably a little weak for $5 (it's a Horse Traders without the discard but no reaction). Margrave is usually stronger, since you usually have an average card value over $1  plus it has the attack. At any rate, you're pretty likely to not be able to trash, since you probably won't get 3 of the same card OR 3 unique cards - you're probably most likely to get something like two coppers and a silver.

If you hit 3 treasures and do trash, it'll usually be +1 buy +$6. I don't think it's usually worth it to trash a $5 card just for an extra $3 to spend. Consider that Mining Village can be trashed for +$2, but also costs less and has a weak on-play effect (just a regular Village). Trashing a Casino is like using a Spoils that you had to spend a turn actually buying.

This card seems like a big-variance card (which you're probably going for with Casino), but it seems too big. Half the time, this card is a Woodcutter or worse. The other half, it's a terminal Gold, or a even single-shot for a huge payout. I wouldn't pay $5 for something that half the time is a $3 card or worse. I guess it could work in Big Money decks, but it becomes a big liability once you start to green. Its effect quickly degrades to Woodcutter levels, and you won't be able to trash it once it stops hitting. Come endgame, I'd rather have a silver. If this card could be fixed so that the no-payout option wasn't so bad, it might be a start at improving it.

74
Game Reports / Re: Is Treasure Map+Talisman a combo?
« on: November 01, 2013, 01:15:45 am »
Trust your instincts, jaybeez. This is not the combo you're looking for.

Your opponent utilizes the Talisman exactly once to pick up a single extra Treasure Map that he never uses - almost certainly not worth it, considering that Talisman could have been another TM itself. It looks like your opponent does get a little lucky, lining up TMs when there's only 3 in a 30+ card deck. It's a high-variance, high-reward play, and it worked out here.

75
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Okay, Halloween kingdom:
« on: October 30, 2013, 10:21:30 pm »
Could also include Scrying Pool, Mystic, or Soothsayer.

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