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51

Help! / How can he be getting Peddlers this fast?

« on: December 21, 2012, 01:34:34 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/20/game-20121220-223032-97ed1b3e.html

I open 5/2 on a board with Witch and still get crushed. I'm throwing the Curses at him right away and he still manages to build a Peddler stack ending in a couple of Plats that just doesn't even care. Meanwhile I just can't seem to get any economy going, ever.

I don't even.

52

Help! / He was trashing his FG to Spice Merchant but still won?

« on: December 20, 2012, 10:53:35 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/20/game-20121220-195210-1710baf5.html

WTF went wrong here? Why can't I put together big hands with FG and Tactician?

53

Game Reports / In which I play Warehouse/TM and don't hit until turn 11.

« on: December 20, 2012, 09:08:50 pm »

And then still win, oddly.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/20/game-20121220-180754-815a2a7d.html

ETA: And now this happens the SAME DAY

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/20/game-20121220-203333-adf8a5f7.html

Highlights:

I 8-2 Tournament, but he gets the first three prizes.

I get to Province before him, while having more Tournaments, but he lines it up immediately.

When I try to switch tactics and take the Vault-GM option, I draw a Tournament and a Province together, dead, with the Vault.

I swear I must be the unluckiest Dominion player ever. I could find examples of this kind of thing constantly in my play logs if I were keeping track. It's just unbelievable. Vetoing the only $2 card is the surest way to ensure I open 5/2. I can have a deck full of FV and terminal Silvers and be unable to hit $5 for approximately forever vs. a curser. "Take the Mint trashing", the voice in my head says, but oh, no, the other guy's Witch ensures I never see a decent hand again.

I think I'm going insane. There are times when I go to play Solitaire and just do strict BMU like ten times in a row, just to confirm to myself that yes, it does normally get 4 Provinces in 17 turns and yes, it does work the same way for me as for everyone else and no, I don't have some kind of curse on me that ensures that the only time I can hit $5 is when I'm not trying to buy $5 Actions and then I get it constantly.

54

Help! / Apparently Duchy/Duke CAN ignore Familiar? Even on a Wharf/Village engine board?

« on: December 18, 2012, 06:00:54 pm »

And with Remake, too?!?!?!?!?

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/18/game-20121218-145600-d0387a25.html

I just... don't even. How is my deck the one that's continually clogged, when I gave him all the Curses? I can't really expect to let him keep taking Duchy/Duke and just piledrive Province, can I?

55

Help! / Apparently Goons + FV can't ignore Familiar?

« on: December 13, 2012, 08:21:28 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/13/game-20121213-171703-c147884d.html

I thought, I'd get to Goons way faster (and I did), and with multiple Goons and Villages, I ought to be able to put together at least some double-Goons turns even without draw (nope). Meanwhile I have Salvager to take care of some incoming Curses...

... but I got destroyed. Plus he actually overtook me on Goons count because I suddenly had to worry about piling out on myself, and that just made things worse.

But I mean, really, he bought Monument on this board?!

56

Help! / Seriously, what are the odds of this?

« on: December 13, 2012, 02:34:42 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/12/game-20121212-232226-8abe5bc6.html

We both open Loan/WV with the idea of slimming down, playing multiple WVs to grab a bunch of Peddlers at once. I'm first player, but I still lose the Peddler split 3-7 (would be 2-8 if he didn't decide to pick up a Caravan for some reason) and it's hopeless from there...

Although it still takes him 16 turns to get to the 4th Province this way. Makes me wonder if there isn't a better strategy here than trying to grab Peddlers to feed to KC? Something with Apprentice, maybe? Are Fairgrounds viable here, with the +Buy and a bunch of decent Kingdom cards?

If the title sounds annoyed, it's because I am. I go through game after game of this, day after day, and it's a struggle just to pull out the games where I could bear to hear any commentary. Earlier today I had a Warehouse-TM board, and the other guy connected on the first try, while I three times in a row drew one Warehouse and one TM, found the second Warehouse with the first, and then still failed to find the second TM.

If I swore at you today on Iso after some bad luck, I'm sorry. You're nowhere near being alone. It feels like I've been going through this constantly day after day for at least the last month, not only in Dominion but in every other game I try to play. It's doubly frustrating because this is supposed to be escapism from a home situation that I don't really want to talk about but which is quite stressful, but even the things designed to provide joy leave me barely touched when I succeed and foaming with anger when I fail. I don't even know what to do any more.

57

Help! / HP+X loses to Alchemists?!?

« on: December 12, 2012, 07:14:04 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/12/game-20121212-160433-4d95e8a6.html

How does he manage to split the HPs after the Potion opening?

How does he manage to eventually put the stack together despite all the junk in his deck?

Is it just me or does he somehow magically have the Curse in hand to avoid Mountebank more consistently than I do, even though he's trying to topdeck Alchemists (which take up space in his initial handsize where the Curse can't be)?

Why aren't my later Cellar buys able to hold things together for me?

58

Help! / Why didn't this work?

« on: December 11, 2012, 10:49:35 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/11/game-20121211-194742-10d4a6c1.html

There's virtual coin (Treasury and Chancellor), +Action (Hamlet, Inn and University, which can also be used to gain Treasuries), and trashing (Salvager, which can also trash itself for coin) - so a double-tac engine should be totally feasible, right? But it ends up being ridiculously slow. What's going wrong here?

59

Game Reports / I finally won one of these blasted village-wharf games!

« on: December 11, 2012, 07:05:59 pm »

If you count Nobles as a village, anyway.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/11/game-20121211-155518-03395e8a.html

3 Nobles works out pretty well here; the idea is to play 2 of them for actions and one for cards each turn, along with 2 out of 4 Wharves. That won't hold together indefinitely, but it runs smoothly for a couple of double-Province turns in a row. Steward does trashing early (necessary to get real draw going because I don't have that much +Action access) and adds some flexibility later (as it can be played for coin instead if things don't line up). Holding myself to 2 Wharves each turn means the other two are available for the next turn; buying more would come at Gold opportunity cost and be counterproductive with only 3 Nobles for +Action.

Basically, this time I "budgeted" for the actions I was going to get (well, actually I resolved to get 2 Wharves quickly, see how many Nobles I could get after that, and plan accordingly) and made sure to pick up treasure as well in a good balance (apparently). Nobles aren't a great village in terms of raw card drawing power (3 Nobles can be net +1 Action while replacing themselves, or net +3 Action without; vanilla Village is net +3 Actions while replacing themselves), but they add valuable flexibility (and oh, yeah, are worth VP). Wharf engines tend to magnify their own luck, as I put it talking to dondon the other day, so it's nice to have a village that smooths out the bumps and gets the ball rolling.

And yeah, opponent is probably a noob, no need to point that out. I'm satisfied with the VP total and how the engine ran.

60

Help! / Is this just a Goons game being a Goons game?

« on: December 11, 2012, 12:54:20 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/11/game-20121211-095140-9df8821b.html

I got my 5 Goons faster, and I won the Apprentices (I think?) and protected better with Lighthouse, but somehow he was able to fire off the megaturn before I could. Is it just the trashing he's getting early from Salvager?

61

Help! / WTF is going on here?

« on: December 11, 2012, 12:30:07 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/11/game-20121211-092347-4ff341c9.html

The guy fails to be aggressive with Ambassador early, doesn't care about Possession on board, doesn't care about like a million other things, massively over-builds (I mean what is he going to do with GM anyway) and stomps me anyway by basically just taking PStones.

Meanwhile, I trim my deck down, take Silvers, have everything under control, start building an Alch stack, and yet somehow I can't ever afford GM or Possession. How does that happen? I was supposed to be able to build a stack that could reliably draw deck and Possess him, and then gradually relieve him of everything nice via the Ambassadors...

62

Help! / Seriously, I just cannot seem to figure out Village-Wharf games.

« on: December 10, 2012, 12:15:57 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/09/game-20121209-211321-feb00278.html

Develop no good here? It seems like there is something useful at every price point, and topdecking village-wharf pairs sounds especially nice.

63

Help! / Is Vault-BM really that strong?

« on: December 08, 2012, 05:47:09 am »

41 points in 14 turns for Vault/Lighthouse opening, BM with just 1 random Island? Really? Is there really nothing better here?

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/08/game-20121208-024530-3642af0e.html

64

Game Reports / In which my bad luck continues, this time vs. Swindler.

« on: December 08, 2012, 01:30:32 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/07/game-20121207-221830-d1f6a34d.html

Turn 3: I swindle Estate->Estate, him Copper->Curse.
Turn 4: I draw $1p and do nothing, he picks up a second Swindler.
Turn 6: him Copper->Curse.
Turn 7: him Copper->Curse.
Turn 9: me Copper->Curse, him Copper->Curse.
Turn 10: him Potion->Talisman.
Turn 11: me Estate->Estate, him NV->Estate.
Turn 14: me Alch->Alch.
Turn 17: him Curse->Curse.
Turn 18: him Copper->Curse.
Turn 19: him NV->Estate.
Turn 21: me Copper->Curse, him Potion->Talisman. Just to add insult to injury, since he should have piled out the previous turn.

After the first Goons buy, I didn't hit $5 again for the rest of the game.

65

Help! / Why didn't NV/Bridge work?

« on: December 03, 2012, 10:59:11 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/03/game-20121203-075515-c0d628df.html

The turn before I was about to see what I could put together, he managed to put together what he needed to grab the last two Bishops... I was way ahead on NV and on Bridge, having used University earlier to gain Bridges. Did they get scryed away or something? It seemed like pulling teeth the whole way to get Bridges on the mat... I started grabbing Bishops for insurance and hoping that a little trashing would help with getting things together, but then he got the rest of them. Can I ragequit when I pull Bridge * 3 / Copper / Bishop at the end of the shuffle?

66

Variants and Fan Cards / Potion-cost upgrading?

« on: November 25, 2012, 09:16:15 pm »

Dominion has effects that let you trash a card in exchange for one costing $1, $2 or $3 more. But - why not this one?

----

Name? - Action - Cost?

Trash a card from your hand. Gain a card costing up to $P more than the trashed card.

----

It would really have to have a Potion cost, or else it defeats the purpose of Alchemy. But just how powerful is this? And how interesting? What would the most common uses be?

67

Game Reports / Courage Wolf: Only $7 in virtual coin - doubletac anyway!

« on: November 25, 2012, 08:43:36 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/25/game-20121125-173124-87ec7da4.html

I take an early Amb lead, which opponent tries to exploit by using Apothecary to draw a bunch of Copper with the occasional Tactician looking for a big turn or something. He also manages to grab 3 Bazaars, limiting my virtual coin to 7, and a Forge to trash Curses I guess. But his deck just keeps getting bigger and bigger, especially as I finish assembling the double-Tactician + Outpost engine which eventually is reliably able to draw deck and re-Tac on both regular and Outpost turns. This means he eats a lot of Curses and Potions - both piles, in fact, ending the game at the same time that I pick up a Province (breaking the engine by using my one Copper). I was pretty proud of how this came together, since it takes forever to recover from the lead he builds up, yet at the same time the progress is inexorable.

I guess I'm lucky he never got to forge 2 Potions into a Province... that was easily the worst part of my play; I barely used the thing (could have just underbought a Bazaar the first time around), already had a trim deck that couldn't make big hands at that point, and then I ended up giving it to him with Ambassador because "it's a dead card for me" when I could have let it be Apprentice fuel to grease the engine. On his side, it's got to be wrong to go heavily for Apothecary but then keep returning and trashing Copper.

68

Help! / Just wtf?

« on: November 23, 2012, 08:42:12 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/23/game-20121123-053604-b86fadf2.html

We both got 2 Ambs, and I was ahead on those, but it felt like I somehow was constantly behind in the Amb war.

He made a strange Quarry buy first round on a board with no +Action or +Buy, but still seemed to get better economy, even before the whole Hoard thing happened.

I won Hunting Parties 7-3 but couldn't seem to ever chain them. I thought you're not supposed to need more than one Gold in this deck? And that 7 Lab-types should have pretty decent coverage of a sub-30 card deck?

How could this go so far wrong?

69

Game Reports / Wherein the cheap Actions are key to unlocking the power of the expensive ones

« on: November 19, 2012, 08:46:04 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/19/game-20121119-174311-820ad94b.html

Absolutely *insane* board. But I love the way that Watchtower and Develop help out the power cards - defending against the Goons attack, topdecking good cards and then drawing them. I'm sure it can be played better than this... I probably should actually be ignoring City even though it's so easy to power up o_O

70

Game Reports / Is BM-Envoy really this strong?

« on: November 16, 2012, 04:42:29 pm »

Especially on a board with Wharf... I won, but I really had to squeak it out, taking his treasure, building an engine and watching all the green piles and VP totals very carefully.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/16/game-20121116-132752-9cd89eb6.html

I mean, I could understand having difficulty building a Wharf engine vs BM-Wharf (see recent grumblings), but Envoy, really? I really didn't want to just play BM-Wharf against BM-Envoy because there are too many ways to just be unlucky there, and besides I really prefer games with actual interaction. I wonder if "Buybot" really is a bot, that hasn't yet been programmed for Wharf...

On a side note, here's a good board for Thief, I guess. SP provides deck inspection (although I messed this up a bit) while doing a decent job of pulling out villages and Wharves, and then I can finish with the Wharves to pull out Treasure stolen by the Thieves and skipped by SP.

71

Help! / OK, *this* time it's got to just be bad luck.

« on: November 15, 2012, 08:14:36 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/15/game-20121115-170608-aae42653.html

It looked like the Curses were going fast with Torturer, as he didn't want to discard very much... so I prepared by taking a lead on Cities. He hardly hurt me with Goons, yet I still somehow managed to never really get anything to connect; with a final deck of 7 Cities in 35 cards plus some additional draw, I still wasn't getting close to drawing my deck, and in fact I completely stalled the next turn after buying an Outpost to fully capitalize. And then all he had to do was line up two Bridges and pile Estates... I guess I should have been watching that more closely, but sheesh. I guess we both undervalued Bridge here, really, but I mean I couldn't even draw nearly as much as I was supposed to even without taking on those extra terminals. Not to mention that early on, my terminals were constantly colliding while the Cities would bunch up elsewhere in my deck, so I missed several opportunities to trash with Trade Route in favour of attacking...

72

Game Reports / Ambassador vs Possession is crazy enough without...

« on: November 15, 2012, 07:03:20 pm »

... Familiar, Outpost, Island...

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/15/game-20121115-154542-087917e8.html

I feel like Ambassador can't be ignored even with Possession on board, because of the threat of facing a combined attack from Ambassador and Familiar. But then again, there's Lighthouse... but then that won't protect from Possession, and the only trashing is Transmute, so if the Lighthouses ever fail then you'd have to dip into Potions to have a chance of getting rid of them. And with Familiar, a single opening could mean many received Curses. Meanwhile, the plan was to use an Island to get rid of my Ambassador at the key moment, but this means continuing to defend with Lighthouses. As it happens, he got to Possession quicker than I expected while my own economy struggled (Familiar has pretty steep opportunity cost), but I'd managed to make his deck pretty big anyway. But then he Possessed me at the key moment, and sent one of my Familiars off to an Island instead of the Ambassador... naturally I got revenge later And then, there are all the various strange interactions that Possession has with Outpost. (I think my opponent messed up and helped me a couple times.)

All in all it was a very complex game. How would you play it? I suspect a lot of my later Transmute buys should be Estate, since there's no guarantee I'll get around to removing the Curses...

73

Game Reports / I realized too late how I could have improved this. :)

« on: November 13, 2012, 02:37:15 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/13/game-20121113-113342-b15214ae.html

The problem with trying to play a double-Tac engine with Barons and Villages, of course, is that you eventually run out of cards and aren't going to build up to double-Colony. I ended up seizing an opportunity to pile out to avoid the problem because I wasn't sure if his money strategy would have been able to catch up.

But then I realized that the perfect draw card for a green-heavy, who-cares-about-treasures-anyway deck was staring me right in the face...

Take it away, Robz!

P.S. Opponent was very upset about this one, saying something about "hacks". I guess not everyone has seen a double-Tac engine before...

74

Game Reports / A change of plans

« on: November 08, 2012, 09:04:45 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/08/game-20121108-173745-9b0ccae8.html

So Tactician and Vault are out, time to party hard, right?

Well - that's what I thought to start out, too. Don't even really know what I planned to do with the Forge initially, I think it was supposed to be some light trashing just to guarantee drawing every turn (because missing the Tac is a pain).

But then I started thinking. There are no Villages or draw cards here. Even if I hadn't over-trashed slightly, the best I can get from Vault is $9 (10 card start, draw 2 with Vault, for net 11 in hand, and I need to reserve the Tac and 1 other card), and it's a Colony game. (Later, it occurred to me that adding some Lighthouses might be able to fix this, but it still sounds not quite reliable.) Plus, incoming Victory cards add an increasing chance of the engine breaking. Which is not really catastrophic, but meh.

Fortunately, the Tactician setup also meant a big hand for Forge. So I switched gears completely, and forged aggressively for Gold and Platinum. The Upgrade I got on turn 9 when I drew my Tac dead with the Vault (I really couldn't think of anything better - I guess Lighthouse is better if you're really going to commit to the strategy! Or, you know, Duchy...) turned out to give me a couple of Golds, and suddenly I had a ridiculous money density, plus the ability to Forge Colony->Colony to end the game quickly while ahead.

So there you go. Normally, I suppose completely changing your strategy in mid-stream is a recipe for disaster, but here I somehow managed to change from a double-Tac engine to basically BM+X and still pull it off.

The opponent's idea, of using single-Tac to build big hands and collide TM, then take Banks, seems pretty solid to me. Although once he gets the 4 Golds I honestly think he's better off just playing straight BM, and Upgrading Tac->Gold like I did; in which case it also makes sense to trash Copper and ignore Bank. The thing is, 2 Colonies every 2 turns isn't really any better then 1 Colony every turn, and there isn't any extra +Buy to take advantage of big hand-Bank megabucks. Maybe each player could add a Margrave, too, just for the attack (although there's some risk of terminal collision).

75

Help! / I win the village-wharf fight, lose the game?

« on: November 08, 2012, 08:52:41 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/08/game-20121108-054859-ce770fd1.html

So this seems like a pretty obvious Village-Wharf board, and I pick up a Trader in order to get Silver quickly... I end up taking 7 of the Wharves and 4 WV which really ought to be enough, but I still get beaten out. Is Envoy really that good here? He can presumably draw a lot given the Envoys and a bunch of Villages, but it seems like he played Wharf in preference to Envoy when given the chance...