I'm looking forward to seeing how this article will unfold.
I've heard and seen glimpses of Jack-of-all-Trades being more than just a Big-Money card. I've noticed that even Double-Jack can make use of other cards such as Apprentice, Oasis, Warehouse and maybe even Necropolis. Jack in (or into) an engine is something I want to investigate but haven't tried in the game with Jack in it yet.
Where's Poor House? It shines in treasure-less decks, and engines are so much more reliable when you're playing a treasure-less deck. And KC/Poor House can generate so much money.
Coppersmith and Bank can also be payload cards. They just want big handsizes, and you don't need to waste time getting other treasures. Wharf/Bank and Council Room/Bank are not able examples of Bank's power. However, they often don't work out so great for payload purposes.
This would have been a really nice board for Vineyard, except Tactician was the only source of +buy, and it's a tricky decision as to whether you want to play Tactician and discard Potion or just buy Vineyard. We both went for the same strategy: Double Tactician with Steward for coin. There were plenty of Villages to make this possible. However, one must forgo buying a Vineyard in order to play a Tactician while buying a Province. I Bought Province/Vineyard with my tac turns at every opportunity.
Sadly, Watno disconnected. He was kind enough to grant me the win, though looking at the log now it seemed pretty even except for the fact that I had first player advantage.
Yeah Cultist was on the board. Sucks right? Well not quite, as this game had Fairgrounds. I won the ruins split 7-3, but my opponent ended up with all 5 types of ruins in his deck. That plus his emphasis on Silvers that I didn't share made this one pretty close. By the end, Watno had 8VP Fairgrounds. It didn't matter much though, as he still would have won with 6VP Fairgrounds.
Forge, Fortress, Conspirator, and Watchtower to boot? That's already pretty great, and my opponent went straight for that, eventually trashing Fortresses into Provinces with Forge. I had the same idea, but hitting 5/2 on both shuffles complicated things. I opened Smithy, hoping I would be able to at least buy Forge as fast as I can and having a card that can increase my handsize for Forge can trash more cards.
Not much stands out here besides IGG and Mountebank, but Trader, the bane of both, was present. Masterpiece, the other slog defender, was present too. I was kinda happy that Feodum wasn't around as well.
We both opened Trader/Silver, but I got lucky Trader/Estate Collisions while my opponent's Trader landed on turn 5. My opponent gets a lot more Traders that I did to compensate. I was hoping to rely on Masterpiece for extra Silver if I needed it. At the same time, I got a Salvager, hoping to rush the game end if I got ahead. My lack of Traders allowed my opponent to Gain IGGs to curse me with low chances of backfiring. I made sure to take an extra Masterpiece overpay turn because of that. shark_bait would be proud.
This was a Colony game, and it felt like the kingdom wanted Colonies. We both got Merchant ships and Quarries hoping to get Grand Markets. I took the opportunity to get some early Expands for that purpose, while my opponent got more Quarries. We end up splitting the Grand Markets 5-5. That's cool. My opponent got some Platinum and lots of Havens, but I still had my 2 Expands. It was close at the end.
This game was tense in its own way. We both open Oracle/Silver. I was hoping to get Trading Post as fast as possible, and indeed I get one on turn 3, but do so over getting Gold. I'm not sure if this was the correct play here, as Trading Post can get in the way of Oracle draw. You can see that my opponent could afford way more Oracles in his deck because he got Gold instead of Oracle. I Manage to be ahead in VP when the Duchies run out, but the presence of Saboteur made things scary. Sab could have trashed a Province and you can't even take Duchy with it. Luckily for me, I got the last Province for the win before Sab could do real damage.
Thank you Watno for the fun games. It's just a shame that you had to put up with disconnects.
Here, I'll make a bold prediction: Market, the least-vetoed and most middling card in all of Dominion! It neither offends nor excites anyone, and is thus likely to be left out.
I refrained from making this prediction because I wasn't 100% sure I didn't include it in one of my submissions, but atfer verifying that I also wonder whether Market was included in any submissions.
... and I think building kingdoms that use non-usually-powerful cards is something that appeals some people.
Yes it does. I submitted a kingdom that makes a usually very strong card almost worthless, and a usually crappy card is brutally strong.
The five missing cards are probably totally random cards people just didn't think of or assumed would be too swingy. Maybe something like Tribute or Loan or Mandarin.
@KingZog3 I included Adventurer in one of my submissions. So sorry.
Ever since I entered the corporate world, I've noticed that people use acronyms for EVERYTHING. Maybe they think it makes them sound more knowledgeable, I dunno. I have a problem with it. Not only are you being ambiguous and confusing, but you don't even sound cool anymore; you sound like a dweeb. Acronyms are terrible things, nobody should be using them anymore, and if you do, you are basically a terrorist.
I'M GOING TO PUT MY PIN NUMBER IN THE ATM MACHINE
Over half of the people that use those acronyms use them improperly. When you do, you sound like a twit. Everybody is making fun of the way you can't speak properly. At this point already, with no further justification, most common acronyms are doing more harm than good. I don't use them often, but when I do I put my number in the cash machine; or better still, I put my num in the cash mash.
DDR
There are at least three different meanings in my field for the acronym "DDR". None of them are Dance Dance Revolution, which is what I think of every time they are used. There are even acronyms where some of the letters are acronyms themselves! I ask you what it stands for and you tell me and I still don't know what it means! I don't know about you, but usually when I speak, I do so for the purpose of having people understand what's coming out of my mouth (OK some people just like to hear the sound of their own voice; you people can say whatever you want I guess). Using acronyms, at least one of these two things is happening: 1. you aren't being understood; 2. you are using more energy explaining yourself the way you otherwise would (so what's the point?).
Clearly, we as a society need to address the issue that we've now figured out acronyms are not an effective way of communicating. Acro-ing something is clearly not the way to hash things in our language (or any language, really). I've noticed most people using acronyms these days are older, so maybe we just have to wait for them to die off?
BUT I'LL SOUND EVEN STUPIDER USING ABBREVS!
No.
Seriously, listen to the cool kids talking, are you jeal of that guy putting his p-corn in the m-wave? Totes? I promise you, abbrevs are MUCH cooler than acros. Anyone using acronyms today is clearly behind the times and deserves unending ridicule. Please just stop.
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Editor's note: some definitions of "acronym" include the abbrevs that I've mentioned. When I talk about "acronyms" I'm referring to the use of only letters and not chunks of words, just to resolve any ambiguity.
Also, I've been having some thoughts of using certain abbrevs in a literary context: let's say you're having an IM bro session with your friend but you want to be cooler. You would want to type something that sounds like "Check this bro sesh, no bigs, just the uzh." but that's confusing. We really want to say something like "Check this bro seʃ, no bigs, just the uʒ." It would be much easier if these phonetic symbols were easier to type so we could inject maximum awesomeness into more facets of our lives.
A bit of a necro, but I've been thinking about this and I absolutely agree with acronyms being pretty awful. It's bad enough when people use acronyms online that you have to look up, either on a Wiki or through some special glossary. It's even more horrid to use them in speech. If I have to take 5-10 seconds figuring out half the acronyms you're using, then the acronyms are not improving communication, but are instead hurting it.
If you use an acronym in a paper or something, please introduce it first. For example, "When considering DMA (Direct Memory Access) systems..."
This game had a lot of 1-card trashers. I think my opponent was hoping to trash a lot of squires, but I ended up buying most of the Minions before that could happen. I made a point of getting Butcher to help me on this front.
We both went for Jack here. I wanted to make the best of my 5/2 opening by getting an Apprentice, which I figured would work well with JoaT. My opponent had an early lead on Gold, but I got a second Jack while my opponent didn't. Close one.
The key engine components costed $5, and Familiar was on the board with Storeroom. Naturally, we both go for Familiar. Our transitions, however, we very different. I went for Apprentice trashing and Bandit Camps, while my opponent went for Hunting Parties. I feel like there were a lot of misplays on my part here.
This game...this game. We both went of double Tac/Vault. I figured you want to get either Steward or Spice Merchant for trashing, but not both. I managed to set my Double Tac off first, but I forgot to leave a card in hand to discard on turn 11! Arrrrgggg. I'm pretty sure I could have won the game if it weren't for that.
This one my opponent started, even though GokoDom regulates that I should have started here (I was first player in game 1). However, the series was tied at 2-2 at this point, so we needed to play all 6 games no matter what. Therefore, I'd simply start game 6 and no harm would be done.
A Tournament game with a free Baker token. You can bet prizes will be coming into play here. My opponent is able to open Gold/Haven while I opt for double Tournament. I never feel all that good when I get a bunch of Tournaments, but I did so here anyway. My opponent's opening Gold seems to have a good early game booster, and I end up scrambling to trash stuff with Graverobber. Problem was, my opponent can use Graverobber too.
Tournament shows itself once again, but here I felt the game was a lot more interesting due to the presence of Feodum and Silk Road, as well as Forge for fancy trash-for-benefit plays. I'm lucky enough to get the Trusty Steed to use for the Silver, but my opponent got Followers. It was really close in the end.
Overall, I enjoyed these games. Goodl uck with the rest of the tournament, secret tunnel.
^It seems like you need a lot of spare actions to get use from the sifting. I feel like in the late game in a big engine it's mostly just Secret Chamber with a buy.
This. I'd rather just have another Smithy instead. Maybe if you hit $3 and there are no other engine parts at $3 it can be worth it.
I find Storeroom is best for BM or Alt-VP games. Cellar does much better job in an engine for sifting.
The Storeroom also provides +buy, a key component for engines. Otherwise yeah, I guess I'd prefer Cellar for the non-terminal-ness
I'm more or less fine with this list, except I can't understand how Storeroom DROPPED in points. C'mon guys, most draw engines love Storeroom. Sifting, discarding green for coin, and even +buy. Storeroom's also great when it comes to getting potion cards.
Terminal sifting isn't that great, and you don't want to have a lot of green to discard for coin usually. The +buy part is useful, though. It's mostly good for getting potion cards, double Tactician and draw-to-X and Scrying Pool engines, as well as getting early $5s if those are important, but other than that, it's usually skippable.
EDIT: Ah, I see now that this is pretty much exactly what Qvist said about it too. Well, at least I said one thing that wasn't in the Part 2/3 post!
Storeroom works well in any Village-Smithy variant deck. Not sure how common those are anymore. So far, I've been pretty satisfied with Storeroom's performance to rate it higher. I'll see if I keep it there for the next card ranking.
I'm more or less fine with this list, except I can't understand how Storeroom DROPPED in points. C'mon guys, most draw engines love Storeroom. Sifting, discarding green for coin, and even +buy. Storeroom's also great when it comes to getting potion cards.
Might be a 1/10 chance for hitting two copper, but there's also the chance of hitting one copper which also isn't that great. You have 24% chance of hitting two Estates. But hey, this is assuming you open 5/2. What if you open 2/5? You'll be an additional turn behind if you skip the $2 hand, or you'll drop the percentages for a good Doctor overpay if you buy something.
I would rarely open doctor with 2/5, and certainly not if there's chapel. 5/2 doctor is extremely strong, but man, one turn difference is huge.
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Again, Doctor is a good opening. I am not arguing against that. But silerspawn said that $5 Doctor is the BEST opening, better than any Chapel opening and "as good as it gets". I am saying that it isn't at all clear that Doctor is the very best, and that there are certainly boards where Chapel would be the better choice.
Well, it's only the best if you want to trash down quickly. If you go for a garden rush, it's a terrible opening. You can compare it to chapel because you generally want to do the same thing with both. Are there boards where chapel is better? Yea, every shelter board. Trashing shelters with doctor is such a pain. Aside from that though, I don't think it really depends on the board. Maybe the importance of hitting 5$ is a factor, but generally they will behave similar on most boards, since you want to do the same thing with both of them. I just feel like 5$ doctor kills junk faster than chapel and has more buying power, so it's just better no matter what the rest of the board looks like. I'm not certain, even though I've played quite a lot of games with both, it's possible that I was lucky with doctor in most of them. This is actually something simulations could give answers to.
Can't believe this is the second time I'm defending a $3 trasher. Uh, but overall chapel is defintely better. 5$ doctor opening is great, but you only open with 5$ in... *doing maths* 8,3% of all games. Doctor is like trading post, very good early but loses strength really fast.
You know what, 5/2 opening with doctor (or 6/2 or 5/3) really does sound good for trashing, especially if you hit Estates with the overpay. You just need good cards to get at low costs.
Apprentice is awesome. Apprentice/Market Square is supposed to be a crazy good combo up there with Hermit/Market Square, though I've never had the opportunity to try it, myself.
Apprentice/Market Square came up in one of my GokoDom matches. Crazy stuff.
In general, Apprentice is an awesome card to have when you're ahead. It also helps clear out junk while maintaining power in the late game. My favourite thing about Apprentice is when it trashes another Apprentice.
As I said, Oasis is no star. but Workshop very, very rarely dominates a board.
How do you like it on this board: Cellar, Market, Militia, Mine, Moat, Remodel, Smithy, Village, Woodcutter, Workshop.
I like it on that board.
Particularly in 2-player.
i recently played on this board when we had a couple of relatives here for visit. i opened double workshop, they collided on turn 5. great card.
It could have happened with Ambassador or Swindler too and you'd have to come to the same conclusion. Any of your openings finding themselves on turn 5 makes the card suck, including Chapel.
I've played this board a bunch with the bots, and I've found Remodel/Workshop to be an effective opening I think. What are people's thoughts here? Or should I just check the winning bot of the simulation challenge?
