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101

Dominion Articles / Re: Beyond Beyond Copper

« on: May 21, 2012, 08:08:05 am »

Copper can be pretty useful when you are drawing your entire hand anyway.

Sounds pretty obvious right? But it's quite surprising how often in e.g. chapel games I see opponents trashing all their coppers, only to draw no card with the carans they played next turn.

102

Help! / Re: Identical strategy. How did I lose?

« on: May 04, 2012, 01:03:03 am »

Just to clarify, I was defending a strategy with two monuments - I wasn't defending opening Monument/Village, which seems pretty pretty bad.

103

Dominion General Discussion / Re: THE Dominion Card List(s): Potion cost cards

« on: May 03, 2012, 11:54:19 am »

I am surprised University is ranked so low. It seems a great card whenever there are 2+ power $5 cards and you can use the village effect - this isn't that rare. Am I overrating it?
With University as the only potion card, I would buy a potion much more often than with Golem as the only potion card.

104

Help! / Re: Identical strategy. How did I lose?

« on: May 03, 2012, 11:51:06 am »

1 Village + 2 Monuments + all the HPs you can grab seems a decent strategy.

105

Game Reports / Re: Interesting Possession interactions

« on: May 02, 2012, 01:29:04 pm »

On a smaller scale, Councilroom.

106

Feedback / Re: Recommended web hosting for forum.dominionstrategy.com

« on: April 24, 2012, 11:52:23 pm »

When I researched web hosting options, dreamhost seemed to get very good recommendations. I was quite happy with as well (though I didn't use it a lot).

107

Help! / Re: The engine that could(n't)

« on: April 24, 2012, 11:39:17 pm »

In game 2 I had admittedly missed his Duchy buy so I did think I was ending in a win.
The consensus here seems to be that Wharf+Hoard is faster than Double Tac+Black Market but the game ended on turn 14 which is pretty average for a non cursing game. Was I lucky to have my engine up so consistently? (My last thought currently on game 2 is that I do tend to get tunnel [this one isn't worth 2vp even] vision when I see Tactician black market, so I'll try and break that habit)

I think you aren't realizing how good wharf is. With wharf you should expect to finish faster than 14 turns on average. The plan is to pick up 2 wharfs as quickly as possible, then add hoard/haggler/crossroad/native village/more wharfs->greening.
Wharf is the best non-attack $5 card, and I don't think it's close.

108

Dominion Articles / Re: Throne Room

« on: April 24, 2012, 11:30:15 pm »

I would say "Works with" is missing Conspirator, Wharf, King's Court (since you will be loading up on actions and cantrips anyway) and Tactician (easier to hit TR with your best action).

109

Dominion General Discussion / Re: When do you want a cantrip

« on: April 20, 2012, 01:09:48 pm »

Negatives that haven't properly been mentioned yet:
- Any defense card might not be in your hand when your opponent attacks (Trader, Bane card, watchtower, I think only moat got mentioned above)
- Play a Farming Village, while the top of your deck is cantrip-estate-curse-wharf...

Obviously emptying a cantrip pile can be good or bad depending on who is leading...

110

Game Reports / Re: Why I love Wharf

« on: April 18, 2012, 11:35:32 am »

Certainly you should get a gold or two once you have enough villages/wharfs to draw you entired hand every turn. Until then, I would always prefer BV->wharf.

111

Help! / Potion/Silver or Potion/Lookout with Familiar on the board?

« on: April 18, 2012, 11:27:07 am »

I am mostly interested in the opening buy decision for this game:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/18/game-20120418-080819-c8e49dcf.html

Cards of Note:
Nobles, IGG, Merchant Ship, Golem, Horse Trader, Familiar, Lookout, Oracle.

Would you open Potion/Lookout (as my opponent did) or Potion/Silver (as I did)? Obviously, Potion/Lookout greatly increases the risk of missing the crucial familiar buy in turn 3/4, but if it works out, you are ahead in terms of trashing and building towards a golem/nobles/merchant ship/Horse Trader engine.

It worked out for my opponent at turn 3/4, and it seemed hard to catch up afterwards. Or did I miss opportunities afterwards?

112

Help! / Re: Double Jack or Engine?

« on: April 18, 2012, 11:20:39 am »

I think I would just go double-jack here, and likely pick up a salvager in midgame.

I don't think the combination oasis/jack is as great as it looks - first of all you have to draw them together, second of all you will soon have trashed your estates, meaning you don't have a bad card to discard, and third of all even if you draw oasis/jack together, you may discard an estate and end up not being able to trash an estate.

I don't think the engines will work well since you basically can only improve you engine with Border Village buys.

113

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Not a misclick

« on: April 17, 2012, 01:14:24 am »

You've played a golem and turned over an ambassador and a trading post with only the colony in hand. Knowing that you have the coins to buy all the remaining colonies back at the end of the turn, due to previously playing many king's courts and grand markets, you send the colony to the supply rather than trash it. Your opponent has a lighthouse so the colony remains in the supply.

I think you can omit the story about king's courts and grand markets - forced to choose between trashing a colony and returning a colony to the supply, it's easy to think of situations where it's beneficial to return it to the supply. For example, you might prefer an even number of colonies left to an odd number because you own the tie-breaker from Monuments.
It even sounds realistic - don't we always draw trading post or ambassador when we play golem with just a colony in hand? 

114

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Attention-whoring thread.... I did it!!

« on: April 16, 2012, 06:19:24 pm »

Obi Wan seems really strong based on the games I played against him, a well-deserved achievement.

115

Game Reports / Re: 5/2 Opening: Witch or Trading Post?

« on: April 15, 2012, 07:56:26 pm »

I also think TP is better than Witch.

One issue with opening witch is: if you don't draw the witch in turn 3, it will miss the reshuffle; also the fact that TP makes it harder to reach $5 next is mitigated by that fact that the Witch player has only one chance to hit $5 before the second reshuffle (in turn 3, assuming he draws the witch in turn 3 or 4).

116

Dominion Articles / Re: Highway cost interactions

« on: April 15, 2012, 07:41:02 pm »

Sorry for necro'ing this thread, but I can't resist posting this neat little game where I got my 5th province at turn 12, based on remake + highways:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/15/game-20120415-163135-42ce1212.html

Obviously I had a bit of shuffle luck, and my opponent didn't play optimally, but it was still fun.

Short version: I opened remake/ambassador, then rushed to get highways, in order to remake
1. copper->wishing wells, then later
2. anything -> more highways, until i had 7, and finally
3. anything -> provinces.

(I also did buy a province with a silver at turn 11, my only treasure left at that point. Expand helped finish off the game, otherwise i would have rebuilt my economy via wishing wells/treasuries to finish of the remaining provinces.)

117

Dominion Articles / Re: When to Venture

« on: April 15, 2012, 05:52:44 pm »

I am surprised there isn't more love for venture/loan in this thread. Seems a decent combination (especially in Colony games, of course).

118

Help! / Re: What's the strategy for Trusty Steed?

« on: January 16, 2012, 10:24:55 am »

It seems a common mistake to choose Trusty Steed when Followers is better - I have won many games when my opponent got the first prize and chose Trusty Steed, I got the second and chose Followers.

119

Help! / Ignore torturers??

« on: January 16, 2012, 10:10:57 am »

$6:
Harem

$5:
Bazaar
Governor
Explorer
Torturer

$3:
Menagerie
Oracle

$2:
Crossroads
Moat
Pawn

(Possible keycards are in bold.)

Would you ignore tortures here, planning to defend them with menageries/a moat or two, trying to end the game quickly via governors before the torturers can do too much damage?
Or just set up torturer chains with Tortures+Bazaars+possibly a crossroad or two?

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/16/game-20120116-070250-ecd669a9.html

120

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Air travel with Dominion

« on: January 10, 2012, 08:03:08 am »

Perhaps they were worried about the Contraband

Or his Ill-Gotten Gains.

They never know if you are a Smuggler.

Maybe they wanted to veto Militia.
You could be a Jack of All Trades.

121

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Most Skill-Intensive Cards

« on: January 10, 2012, 07:44:15 am »

Apprentice - no other card makes deck control as important. If you trash with Salvager, you know what you get. If you trash a province with Apprentice to buy up the last two provinces, only to find out that you don't draw a +buy...

122

Help! / Re: Did I HAVE to buy City?

« on: January 09, 2012, 05:51:29 pm »

On this board, I would have gone for Minions (opening Silver/Horse Trader). I am surprised noone else suggest this - what do you guys think?

123

Help! / Re: 9-1 Grand Market split: How did I lose?

« on: January 01, 2012, 04:39:24 am »

1. Don't break the PPR when you have a more powerful deck than your opponent.

FYP. (I think PPR is overrated, but when you have bigger buying power and have been catching up is exactly the situation where it is most important.)

124

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Quadratic cards

« on: December 26, 2011, 11:13:48 pm »

There are really many cards with non-linear effects.
One minion in your deck is just a non-terminal silver, but three minions in your hand are two non-terminal silvers plus a new card draw. (I.e., the card draw becomes more valuable after having played non-replacing cards.)
One torturer means your opponent discards two worthless cards, but two torturers means he has to discard good cards too or get a curse.
If you have +buys, then every highway is worth as many dollars as buys you can use, but the more highways you play, the more of your buys you are going to be able to use.
If your opponent has a buying power of $6, then playing one saboteur a turn will slow him down by a third. To be a bit simplistic, this means we have 50% more time to buy our 4 provinces. But if we play 2 saboteurs at turn, we slow him down by two thirds, which means we have three times as long to buy our 4 provinces.

125

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Ignoring actions

« on: December 18, 2011, 10:05:42 am »

I think the OP is asking for a set where the dominant strategy is a bot that buys Treasure only.  So Tunnel can't be in the set, because a bot that buys Treasure only will lose to a bot that buys Treasure only but Tunnel with $3 after more than 4 Provinces are bought.  OTOH, I'm pretty sure that a Golem-Village-Village bot would lose to a Treasure-only bot.

If that's the goal, why aren't we putting Venture+Loan in the set? Or did you mean to say "bot that buys Copper/Silver/Gold(/Platinum) only"?
I would think Venture+Loan is dominant not that infrequently.