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101

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Ignoring actions

« on: December 15, 2011, 04:47:05 pm »

Maybe Herbalist is not bad as a $2.  Maybe Develop instead, then?

Does BMU + 1 Develop lose to BMU?  Develop turns Estates into top-decked Silvers, after all.

Maybe Cache thrown in there instead of Herbalist?  I'd be concerned that Spy might be good in that deck.

102

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Ignoring actions

« on: December 15, 2011, 04:41:29 pm »

Epoch's post is very similar to my thought process on this one. I'm not certain about #3 - Moat being the possible example that comes to mind - but it's definitely approximately true.

I'm pretty sure that Moat is a good buy in a BM deck if you happen to draw $2.  I wouldn't be surprised if BM + 1 Moat beats BM even if you have to give up a Silver for the Moat.

DStu:  I'm not sure that Mining Village is ignore-able, either.  Pawn seems likely to be a decent buy at $2, once (+$1, +1 Card?  That's gotta be better than nothing).  I wouldn't be surprised if Walled Village was a decent buy late in a green-war when you both have very diluted decks.

EDIT:  Duh, not Walled Village, which is of course useless.  I was thinking of Farming Village.

103

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How good are these combos?

« on: December 15, 2011, 04:38:24 pm »

Apologies, I should have said best at buying peddlers. As in, if someone told you go and buy the 10 peddlers as fast as you using one other card, I would probably choose WV. Although you make a compelling case for Hamlet. Of course, whether you SHOULD go and try and buy all 10 peddlers in a game, WV or not, is a completely different question, and I would guess the answer is often no.

Hmmm.  Are we talking just single-card-plus-Peddler strategies?  I mean, presumably the fastest ways to get all the Peddlers are things like Bridge, KC, Highway, Ironworks kinds of strategies.

I played around a very small amount with Hamlet vs WV -> Peddler on isotropic.  My not-statistically-significant sample size confirmed my intuition that Hamlet gets you all 10 Peddlers faster than WV.  But I wouldn't be shocked to find that this was not true on more testing.  I WOULD be shocked if Hamlet or WV -> Peddler beats Big Money -- I wasn't getting all 10 Peddlers until like turn 10 or so, and that deck even at turn 10 doesn't seem awesome to me.

104

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Ignoring actions

« on: December 15, 2011, 04:28:20 pm »

I doubt that there are any 10 card kingdoms where you literally can't find a single card to buy even one of that would improve your win rate over absolutely pure BMU.  It seems basically impossible to me.

For such a kingdom to exist, it would pretty much have to be the case that:

1.  There is no $3-$5 Action that produces $2 and does SOMETHING else.  One such buy is strictly superior to Silver.
2.  There are no Attacks, or the Attacks that exist are SO bad that they are inferior to a Silver buy.
3.  There are no +cards actions.
4.  There are no non-basic Treasures that are Silver+ or Gold+.

There are plenty of "one card kingdoms" where the correct thing to do is ignore the one card (For example: if the only allowable Action card buy in the game is Workshop, the correct play is to play pure BMU).  But 10 such cards?  I don't think that this kingdom exists.

105

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How good are these combos?

« on: December 15, 2011, 03:06:56 pm »

Could we settle on

1. Workers Village is probably the best card with which to buy Peddlers

...No?

I don't know why that would be the case at all.  What has Worker's Village got going for it that other sources of non-terminal +buy don't?

I mean, non-terminal +buy is a somewhat thin list of cards.  I think this is exhaustive:

Grand Market
Market
Festival
Worker's Village
Hamlet
Pawn
(hahahah, double-activated Cities, BUT SRSLY FOLKS)

So, of that list, you could probably argue that Market and Festival, and certainly Grand Market, are just too late-blooming to support a mainly-Peddler strategy.  And Pawn, if it gives you +buy and is non-terminal, lacks +card.  But what's WV's got that Hamlet doesn't have?  Well, card advantage, I suppose.  But Hamlet in return has a lower-price point, which is to say that if you go Hamlet->Discard Estate for +buy, you can reasonably buy 2x more Hamlets, while WV is not going to let you buy 2x WV's.

But more importantly, I just wouldn't go WV->Peddler unless there were terminal actions that I was going to use the WV's +actions for.  Not that that's a terribly high bar (some useful terminal action), but on its own, it doesn't look like the best Peddler enabler to me.

106

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Pricing Question: "Unfamiliar"

« on: December 13, 2011, 02:11:38 pm »

Isn't this actually weaker?

Previously they could get discarded down to 3 by playing it 2 times, but now they get to keep 4 and can only be attacked once.
And those 4 new cards are just as random as the first 5, so for the other players the only difference is their free cycling. This may help them more than it hurts them in mid-game. In the beginning and end-game, having 1 card less is a pain though.

No, previously, one play of it left you with the best 4 of 5 cards (usually not a big problem unless your deck has been very culled, since you likely have an Estate or at worst a Copper to discard).  This gives you a random 4 cards, which is fairly likely to include a Copper or Estate in those 4.

107

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Helping your opponent - that bad?

« on: December 13, 2011, 12:28:50 pm »

Wait, what?  You can't factor what your opponent bought instead of Governor into the equation.  Because your opponent will buy something that turn no matter WHAT you buy.  As far as I can tell, you're saying this:

1. You buy Governor, giving yourself two Labs, and your opponent one Lab.
2. Opponent buys Lab.
3. Ergo, Governor sucks, because this is just equal all around.

But isn't this an equivalent argument?:

1. You buy one Lab.
2. Opponent buys Lab.
3. Ergo, Lab sucks, because this is just equal all around.

1. You buy Mountebank.
2. Opponent buys Mountebank.
3. Mountebank sucks, too.  No advantage here either.

I didn't say that Governor sucks.  In the message you actually quoted, I said twice that Governor doesn't suck.

But yeah, all of your examples are, you know, basically true.  You will not get an advantage on your opponent if they mirror-strategy you (besides possible luck advantages and first-player advantage).

So, on the one hand, that's kind of trivial, and on the other hand, it's important.  You don't get an advantage in Dominion by "buying some random card that gives me a bonus."  They all give you bonuses.  That's kind of obvious when you say it that way, but man, people's analyses sure do often look myopically at, "Well, I could see a situation where this card's bonus could be useful, so it must be a good card."

Let's actually put it another way.  If you buy a Governor that you intend to use with the Labs option, you've bought yourself 2 Labs, and if your opponent buys a card that's a payload, they've effectively bought a Lab + a payload.  Which do you think is better, a fast-developing lab deck without a payload, or a fast-developing lab deck with a payload?

108

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Helping your opponent - that bad?

« on: December 12, 2011, 05:17:53 pm »

I guess it boils down to this: in what circumstances is a Lab a better buy than a Governor? Or, in what circumstances is it best to not give your opponent that extra card? Which I'm keen to know. (The implication seems to be that two 6s are better than one 7, so perhaps always. However, obviously Governor is more complex card than that which muddies the waters - no comparison is that perfect.) Note that playing a militia et al. at the end of a Governor chain is a kind of a moot point in this question, as the thread is about giving your opponent a boost, and if you militia them then, well, you're not really giving them that much of a boost (other than giving him a better choice of 3).

Well...  okay, so first of all, it's weird to talk about Governor as though it were just the Lab option.  Probably one of the biggest reasons why it's a bad idea to use Governor's Lab option is that one of the strongest Governor plays is to use its +gold option and its remodel gold->Province option.  That latter one is strongly enabled by having a moderately bigger hand, and particularly a moderately bigger hand without spending Governors, since what you're really looking for is the coincidence of Gold and Governor in your hand.  If you spend your Governors drawing cards, you may end up with lots of Gold and no Governors, while your opponent is meanwhile getting Governors + Golds.

But, ignoring that particular case, I'd say that "very big hand size that you spent resources on" < "moderately big hand size that you didn't spend resources on" when you can't do anything better with the very big hand than "buy one Province/Colony."  If you're just trying to get to $8 with your Governors' card drawing abilities, your opponent who bought Golds or other BMU-like strategies is going to benefit immensely from 6 or 7 card hands, and you'll probably be no better off than he with 7 or 9 card hands.

Where Governor is worth it for the +cards?  When you're drawing to a huge payoff card, particularly one that can screw over your opponent.  Some obvious examples:  Possession (oh, your hand is big?  darn).  Goons (again, you don't care how big your opponent's hand is after you Goons, and the +buy lets you use your very large hand to boot).  Bank if you also have +buy available.  Governor itself for the remodel effect if you are on the upside of a very uneven Governor split.  Highway if you also have multiple +buys available, or Bridge if you have Villages as well.    KC->Bridge.  Setting up KC->KC->anything.

109

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Helping your opponent - that bad?

« on: December 12, 2011, 01:04:10 pm »

@Epoch - so what card would he buy instead, a Lab say? So, look back over my post with the assumption that he bought a lab. How is your two-labs-for-me-one-lab-for-you a wasted purchase, where as his one-lab-for-me is not? I may well be I'm just not seeing how it's so wasted.

No, at that point you go to two explanations:

1.  Governor (or even "Governor but only with the labs option") is not always a bad purchase.
2.  But then there is some truth to the idea that going from 6->7 cards is not as much of a marginal advantage as 5->6.  Sometimes.  Depends a lot on the table.

But the point is, that stuff is AFTER you make the first big leap of understanding that it's not "Governor gives me 2 Labs and him 1 Lab, so it's awesome."  It's "Governor gives me 2 Labs and him 1 Lab plus whatever he bought instead of Governor."

If you don't make that leap first, then the stuff above is kind of irrelevant.  If your opponent gets totally unlucky and doesn't get many $5 buys, your Governors will be awesome.  If your opponent is somehow forbidden from matching you in buys, your Governors will be awesome.

And sometimes, Governor (the Labs option) will be awesome.  It's not like it's a card without merit.  But lots of people's analysis tends to ignore the buy phase, and proceed only from the point of "when the card is in my deck."  The buy phase is the most important tactical point in Dominion.

110

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Helping your opponent - that bad?

« on: December 12, 2011, 12:10:32 pm »

The point is, giving yourself 2 Labs while giving your opponent one may have a worse outcome for you than just giving yourself one, due to the nonlinearity of hand values. You can't just assume that giving one to each cancels out.

Well, more to the point, when you bought that Governor, your opponent bought something else.  If he's broadly speaking doing "as well" as you, then sure, you get 2 Labs and he gets 1 Lab... plus whatever $5 card he bought when you bought the Governor.  That starts looking a lot less good.

If a hypothetical "Governor that only has the lab option" card was just magically placed in your deck, you'd probably be pretty happy about it.  But Dominion is principally a game about managing the opportunity cost of buying cards.  You can't meaningfully analyze any card on the basis of "how good is it once it's in my deck."  You have to analyze it on the basis of, "how good is it compared to other things I could buy instead."

Magical free Governors would be great cards.  Governors that you have to buy, for $5, and thus not buy another powerful Action for, are a lot less good.  Though my understanding is that they're still pretty good, you just have to not necessarily go with the Lab option without a good reason to.

111

Dominion General Discussion / Re: When should you still play Sea Hag if all the curses are gone?

« on: November 16, 2011, 02:51:21 pm »

Any time after they've started greening.  That is the point where you start to expect that "the next shuffle is lower quality than the present shuffle," so cycling your opponent's deck starts to work for you.  Otherwise...  you're broadly going to expect that "the next shuffle is higher quality than the present shuffle," so cycling your opponent's deck works against you.

The only reason I can think of why a good quality opponent might have a mid-game "next shuffle is worse than present shuffle" is if, like, last turn you slammed them with four Curses or something, as your deck, I don't know, KC-Sea Hagged?  Or something?  So you've put a bunch of Curses in their discard pile, and now you'd like them to get those into their draw pile.  Seems like an ultra-rare case.

112

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A Dominion stalemate?

« on: November 16, 2011, 01:31:36 pm »

There actually wasn't time to do that and there wasn't a something better that I could buy. My opponent was buying platinum and colonies so if I didn't use two saboteurs the game was lost anyway. There was a tipping point where the last pirate ships were gone from my opponent's deck or some supply piles emptied. There was a tipping point where my pirate could attack the platinum but the game didn't get there either.

So, first: I think my previous message ends up reading much more snippy than I intended.  Sorry, wasn't trying to be snarky.

Second:  I was more thinking of the hypothetical scenario where you and your opponent had identical decks at that point, than your actual game.

Third:  Obviously, it depends on what else is on the board.

113

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A Dominion stalemate?

« on: November 15, 2011, 09:18:52 pm »

I managed to get my deck down to bazaar, chapel, pirate ship, saboteur, saboteur once. My opponent had saboteurs too so if I'd bought a card I might have seen my pirate ship trashed and my spending gone. If my opponent had the same deck as me then we would have reached a stalemate.

No, same as above.  The correct play there is to trash one (or both) of your existing Saboteurs (you can't play both of them anyway), then buy something to replace it/them.

114

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A Dominion stalemate?

« on: November 15, 2011, 07:19:26 pm »

Talisman does not trigger on VP cards.

Oh, duh.  My bad.  You can tell I don't use Talisman much.

115

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A Dominion statemate?

« on: November 15, 2011, 06:18:28 pm »

Oh, you can also do something like build up a Steward/Talismanx4 deck and then buy Silver (5 of them).  At that point, your deck is Steward, Talisman x4, Silver x5.  Your opponent presumably Pirate Ships you and destroys one Talisman or Silver and you've got enough Treasure to race into Duchies at that point, and by the time your opponent has Pirate Shipped enough to buy Duchies of his own, he's at an insurmountable disadvantage on the Duchies race.

Or you could buy down the Talisman pile and something else -- Stewards?  Whatever.  Trashing as you go to keep your deck pirate-ship immune.  And then explode the Estates, buying 5 of them in the first go with your Talismans, and then rush to finish that pile before your opponent can build his Pirate Ships up enough to buy Duchies.


EDIT:  Actually, this would be completely hilarious.  So, you trash down to Steward, Silverx2 or whatever, and buy a Talisman.  Then another Talisman (using just your Silvers, so you don't get 2 Talismans).  You have a 5 card deck of Steward, Silver, Silver, Talisman, Talisman.  Trash your two Silvers.  Play Steward for $2, and two Talismans.  Buy a Talisman -- you get an extra 2 of them.  So now your deck is Steward, Talisman x5.  Your opponent presumably PS's a Talisman.

Next turn, you play Talisman x4 and buy Talisman, buying out the rest of the pile.  Your deck is now Steward, Talisman x9.  Your opponent presumably PS's, eating one Talisman.  You either have a hand of 5xTalisman, or, even better, Steward, Talisman x4.  If the latter, you play the Steward for +2 cards, getting Talisman x6.  You buy an Estate, and get 5 or 6 extra Estates.  Your opponent at this point still doesn't have a PS capable of buying Duchies -- he has to attack again, and he might even miss now that your deck has a bunch of Estates in it (and, yet better, your draw pile has the Estates concentrated in it, with your hand being mostly Talismans (and maybe a Steward).

Next turn, you start rushing down whatever the next lowest <4 cost pile is lowest, probably Stewards, with the intent to end the game as rapidly as possible.

I don't know that this is winning, but it would be hilarious.

116

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A Dominion statemate?

« on: November 15, 2011, 05:36:47 pm »

There are plenty of good solid stalemate breaks there.  Let's see, your turn 13: you had a 4 card deck of 2 Stewards, 2 Pirate Ships.  Your opponent had no draw pile.  Your correct move was:

Steward: Trash either Steward x1, PS x1 or PS x2, probably the former.
Buy: Copper.

You now have a 3 card deck: Steward, Copper, PS.  You are immune to Pirate Shippery, since you have no draw pile.

Next turn: Steward or PS for +$2.  Play Copper, buy Silver.

Your deck is now, Steward, Copper, PS, Silver.  Still immune to Pirate Shippery.

Next turn:  Buy another Silver.  You can attack your opponent with PS if he's trying to get out of the hole, here, since you've got an action free.

Your deck is now Steward, Copper, PS, Silver x2.  Still immune to Pirate Shippery.

If your opponent is waiting and not doing anything here, I think that the right answer is now "Steward: trash Copper & Pirate Ship, play Silver x2, buy Bureaucrat."

At that point, you've got a deck which is Steward, Bureaucrat, Silverx2.

Next turn, you Bureaucrat, and then buy another Silver.  When you're reliably gaining 2 better-than-Copper treasures per turn, your opponent is pretty screwed (and you'll be doing that pretty reliably until your deck reaches a large enough size that Bureaucrat is unlikely to be in your hand).  He can PS to attack you, but you'll still be gaining Silvers all told.  If he converts to trying to use his PS for money, you increase your Treasure stockpile still further.

Alternately, if that concept of that gives you hives, once you've got the Steward & 2 Silvers and a small deck, you can buy a Mint, trashing your Silvers, and then, keeping your deck size below 5, get a Gold.  Trash your Silvers and Mint up a deck that's Steward, Mint, Goldx3, and then do the same plan as before, except instead of Bureaucrating Silver, you Mint Gold.

117

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Decline of civility on isotropic?

« on: November 15, 2011, 02:32:57 pm »

Yeah, anybody who expects me to ask permission to resign is going to be sadly disappointed.  In 2p, which is all I play.  On the flip-side, I don't like to ask people to hurry through their turn so that I can resign more quickly, either.

118

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Analyzing a board

« on: November 14, 2011, 03:37:07 am »

Courtyard is good because you can use it in a money deck with another action.

I don't think that's true.  Or, I mean, yes, that may be part of why it's true, but Courtyard is really good in a money deck even without another action, too.  Courtyard (and no other actions)/Money beats Smithy/money and Envoy/money.  The ability to push an unneeded Gold or Silver (or even Copper) onto your next hand really is that powerful -- enough to more-than-counteract your slightly less powerful start.

119

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Analyzing a board

« on: November 13, 2011, 02:16:43 pm »

Interesting, good point.  Should Vault be on the list?

I'm not sure -- I kind of threw that list together off the top of my head -- but my sense is that Vault, while strong alone, plays better with other Actions than most cards on that list, thus making it more worthwhile to consider synergies.  For perhaps the same reason, maybe Torturer should come OFF the list, because obviously if Torturer is on the board with any kind of Village, Village/Torturer will almost always beat single Torturer.

Most of those cards are "big terminal drawers," which means that they don't play well with other Actions, while improving your current hand a lot (so you can buy Gold/other big Treasures) and cycle your deck (so you can get to those big cards you bought).

120

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Analyzing a board

« on: November 13, 2011, 01:22:59 pm »

Mean Mr. Mustard alluded to this, but probably didn't say it strongly enough: one of the things that you should ALWAYS check for are the Actions that are intensely strong in a "one or two of these plus Big Money" strat.  I think that this is a roughly ordered, fairly exhaustive list of them:

1.  Masquerade
2.  Jack of All Trades
3.  Embassy
4.  Courtyard
5.  Envoy
6.  Torturer
7.  Wharf
8.  Smithy or Rabble

Especially in Province games, if you see one of those in play, you have to seriously ask whether any possible strategy on the board will beat those cards plus barely modified Big Money.  Most of the time, the answer is "no."

121

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Apothecary/Stables

« on: November 12, 2011, 12:37:37 am »

Apothecary and stables seem like an engine waiting for a payload. It's probably better than apothecary/laboratory but suffers the same limitations too.

Well, the problem with an Apothecary/Stables engine in terms of payload is that it does not provide you with Actions to deliver your payload with.  So.  Your engine is treasure, maybe?  Bank?  Plus some kind of +buy?  Or it's a one-card card of awesomeness, that wins the game for you if you play it every turn (Possession looms large, since you've got Potions already, but what else?  Goons maybe, but this is far from a truly sick Goons combo).  Stables + Apothecary + Village + Payload, but now it seems like we're getting a little strained.

While I see how Stables and Apothecary work together, I'm a little dubious that almost any deck will actually benefit from having them both.  It seems fairly likely to me that most decks will be better off with one or the other, rather than both.

122

Game Reports / Re: Dear My Opponent: I am Sorry

« on: November 09, 2011, 05:55:51 pm »

Dear gumo,

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/09/game-20111109-145456-5052cd9b.html

Ignoring Witches is not a good idea.

Love, Epoch

123

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Very Specific Tactics Question

« on: November 08, 2011, 07:21:09 pm »

...unless delaying it could give you more information/benefit.
I think you play cartographer first, then farming village, then cartographer. I've never run into this exact situation, but in situations where i have have 2 x apothecary + cantrip, I play the cantrip in between, so the apothecary sees more new cards and less of the same ones you just put back.

Hmmm.  I like the general principle, but I'm not sure I like the specific application.

The thing is, Farming Village COULD be more than just a Cantrip, which is what makes it unlike your general rule.  But if you play it after one Cartographer or the other, it WON'T be just a Cantrip -- unless you have to discard everything.

The thing that will give you the most ability to cycle bad cards out of your deck is presumably FV->Cartographer->Cartographer.  That way, if your deck does start off 2xEstate, you cycle them away with FV just the way you would with Cartographer, but you also get more "depth" out of your Cartographers.  So, I guess I'd do that if I thought my deck was super, super bloated.

The thing that will give you the most ability to get the one card that you absolutely need is Cartographer->if you didn't find it already, Cartographer->FV.  And presumably with the Cartographers, you drop every card if it's not the one card you need.  It's a little hard to see what that one card would be, besides Possession.  Tactician, maybe?  Library?

If you lead with Cartographer and you do top-deck a card that you want, but it doesn't just make your turn, you're done, you're great, then I agree with you: Cartographer, FV-to-pick-up-the-card-you-want, Cartographer with more "depth."

124

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House

« on: November 08, 2011, 05:56:38 pm »

I would venture to guess that the presence of trader could make IGG rushing bad. IGGs alone will not deplete the curses, and may often hand out silvers, making it a pretty risky $5 buy. So the game is going to be more likely to end on provinces than piles.

Well...  what's the alternative?  You're right, of course, that with Trader in play, it's deeply unlikely that the curse pile will deplete along with the IGG pile.

But you can't ignore IGG, because a Trader or two won't erase the destruction you'll face if your opponent buys out the IGG pile himself and saddles you with, say, 7 Curses and 3 Silver.  So you'll both end up buying IGG, and if one of you ignores Trader, he'll almost certainly be worse off than the other.

It may not be a RUSH, but it'll still be a game where IGG gets bought out.

125

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House

« on: November 08, 2011, 02:34:12 pm »

What trash-for-benefit are good supports? I suppose primarily Salvager and Remodel ($4 Costs, and IGG=>Duchy potential)... Apprentice has the $5 cost problem, and Bishop is nice but somewhat conflicts with the cursing idea...

Trader!  Trader is good support for IGG with both its defensive abilities against your opponent and your ability to turn one IGG into 5 Silver.