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Messages - Epoch

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401
Game Reports / Re: One epic turn
« on: August 05, 2011, 12:20:33 am »
I'm still not exactly good at this game, but sometimes you get a hand that even I can't screw up. Like double King's Court.

Honestly, that wasn't one epic turn.  An epic turn was like this one:

--- Epoch's turn 18 ---
Epoch plays a Grand Market.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action, +1 buy, and +$2.
Epoch plays a Grand Market.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action, +1 buy, and +$2.
Epoch plays a Grand Market.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action, +1 buy, and +$2.
Epoch plays a Scrying Pool.
... getting +1 action.
... revealing a Copper and discarding it.
... making jjgarcia77 discard a Conspirator.
... revealing a Grand Market and a Copper and putting them in the hand.
Epoch plays a Grand Market.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action, +1 buy, and +$2.
Epoch plays a Conspirator.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action and +$2.
Epoch plays a Conspirator.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action and +$2.
Epoch plays a Conspirator.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action and +$2.
Epoch plays a Scrying Pool.
... getting +1 action.
... revealing a Conspirator and keeping it.
... making jjgarcia77 discard a Grand Market.
... revealing a Conspirator, a Grand Market, a Grand Market, a Scrying Pool, and a Copper and putting them in the hand.
Epoch plays a Grand Market.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action, +1 buy, and +$2.
Epoch plays a Grand Market.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action, +1 buy, and +$2.
Epoch plays a Mining Village.
... drawing 1 card and getting +2 actions.
Epoch plays a Conspirator.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action and +$2.
Epoch plays a Scrying Pool.
... getting +1 action.
... revealing a Scrying Pool and keeping it.
... making jjgarcia77 discard a Grand Market.
... revealing a Scrying Pool, a Conspirator, a Fortune Teller, and a Potion and putting them in the hand.
Epoch plays a Conspirator.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action and +$2.
Epoch plays a Scrying Pool.
... getting +1 action.
... revealing a Scrying Pool and keeping it.
... letting jjgarcia77 keep a Copper.
... revealing a Scrying Pool, a Scrying Pool, and an Estate and putting them in the hand.
Epoch plays a Scrying Pool.
... getting +1 action.
... revealing a Copper and discarding it.
... letting jjgarcia77 keep a Copper.
... (Epoch reshuffles.)
... revealing a Copper and putting it in the hand.
Epoch plays a Scrying Pool.
... getting +1 action.
... revealing a Copper and keeping it.
... letting jjgarcia77 keep a Copper.
... revealing a Copper and putting it in the hand.
Epoch plays a Fortune Teller.
... getting +$2.
... jjgarcia77 reveals a Copper, a Grand Market, a Fortune Teller, and an Estate.
... jjgarcia77 puts the Estate back onto the deck.
... jjgarcia77 discards a Fortune Teller, a Grand Market, and a Copper.
Epoch plays a Pawn.
... getting +1 buy and +$1.
Epoch plays 7 Coppers and a Potion.
Epoch buys a Province.
Epoch buys a Province.
Epoch buys a Province.
Epoch buys a Province.
(Epoch reshuffles.)
(Epoch draws: 2 Grand Markets, 2 Conspirators, and a Scrying Pool.)

What you had, by virtue of your Merchant Ships, was two guaranteed consecutive very good turns.

(Which, I want to be clear, is awesome, and in a lot of ways better than one epic turn.)

402
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Your Blind Spot
« on: August 04, 2011, 04:48:00 pm »
Talisman.  I tend to ignore this most of the time, and occasionally it can do sick things.

Oh god, me too.  I was playing a game which had Caravan, Tournament, and Talisman (and no $5's, I believe, or at least none that stood out), and I opened Silver/Caravan while my opponent opened Silver/Talisman.  My thought process was like, "Haha noob Talisman is weak...  wait...  oh shit."

403
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Soldiers Card: Take Victory Cards
« on: August 04, 2011, 04:24:39 pm »
What if you took minced's "splitting the VP card" idea but split the resulting VP between players?

"Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of his deck. If they revealed any Victory cards, they trash one of them that you choose.  If they trashed a card, both they and you gain a Victory card with a cost at most $3 less than the trashed card.  Discard any remaining revealed cards."

So, your soldier marches into their Province, gain half of it -- you get a Duchy, they're left with a Duchy.  Feels on-flavor.

If it proves a bit too strong, they can optionally gain the card while you must gain the card, or you gain the card on top of your deck while they gain the card in their discard pile.  Note that you're sort of reverse-Bureaucratting them anyhow, taking green cards they were about to draw away from their next hand.

Could potentially do them a favor (trashes their Estate).  Is a Thief-like "attack that doesn't necessarily do anything and is a terminal action."  Is that enough to balance the potential benefit of: trash your opponent's Colony, they gain a Province (-4 VP for them), you gain a Province (+6 VP for you)?  Total gain for you: 10 VP swing.  Ouch.  But not super likely.  Hmmm, it's probably still too good.

EDIT:  How about this?

"Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of his deck. If they revealed any Victory cards, they trash one of them that you choose.  If they trashed a card, you gain a Victory card that costs at most $3 less than the trashed card.  If you gained a Victory card, they gain a number of VP tokens that matches the value of the card you gained.  Discard any remaining revealed cards."

EDIT 2:  Or this?

"Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of his deck.  If they revealed any Victory cards, they trash one of them that you choose.  If they trashed a card, they gain a Victory card that costs at most $3 less than the trashed card.  If they gained a Victory card, you gain a Victory card that costs at most $3 less than the card they gained.  Discard any remaining revealed cards."

Worst case scenario: they trash a Colony (-10 VP them), gain a Province (+6 VP them), you gain a Duchy (+3 VP you).  Net VP swing: 7 points, and you get a Duchy rather than a game-ending card.  Also, you've un-bureaucrated them, and it's a relatively rare case.

EDIT 3:  Or this?

"Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of his deck.  If they revealed any Victory cards, they trash one of them that you choose.  If they trashed a card, first they and then you gain a Victory card costing at most $3 less than the trashed card.  If you gained a Victory card, you also gain a Curse.  Discard any remaining revealed cards."

404
Game Reports / Re: Fishing Village/Torturer countered
« on: August 04, 2011, 04:04:22 pm »
Ditto what play2draw said.  Even if you can't reduce your hand size before playing Library, you're still drawing 3 cards with it -- the same number that a Torturer would draw.  But sometimes Library will draw more, whereas Torturer never draws more than three.

Well, except that you can't chain Libraries together (unless you have something that reduces your hand-size between the two Library plays, which eats into your +actions).

Torturer IS a brutal attack, but if you think about it, the attack power alone is strictly worse than a simple Witch.  Why?  If an opponent takes a Curse to a Witch, then the attack is roughly equal (the difference only being where the Curse winds up),

Torturer is +3 cards, Witch is +2.

and if an opponent chooses the discard option instead, that must mean it is LESS damaging than taking a Curse -- which implies that you'd have done more damage if you'd forced the Curse upon him, as a Witch would.

Torturer is, of course, a decent but not incredible $5 Attack card when played once per turn.  The thing that makes Village Torturer brutal is how it sets itself up to play multiple Torturers per turn, which usually (ie: not when your opponent has an Ambassador in hand) is utterly devastating.

Compared to Witch, well, first, +2 Cards doesn't let you set up a Cards/Action engine for the most part.  Second, there's a lot more possibility for misplay with Village/Torturer rather than Village/Witch.  When you get Tortured first in the turn: okay, do you take the Curse or do you just discard?  Well... discarding is probably better if your opponent is only going to Torture you once...  but then the next Torturer comes along, and you have to say, "Am I really willing to take a Curse in order to rescue a 3 card hand?"  But of course if you do discard again, then you're just prolonging the agony.

405
Game Reports / Re: Fishing Village/Torturer countered
« on: August 04, 2011, 03:58:15 pm »
I still think you'd be underestimating Library in the set. Using havens to pass your junk cards to the next turn, then Library draw four cards to try and draw some Gold. Fishing Villages make playing Ambassador after Library a stronger bet (or playing ambassador first, sending your opponent two cards, then drawing six cards with your Library). It is also a natural counter to opponents' Torturers and Ghost ships.

That's a good point, I hadn't thought of the synergy with Ambassador.

And Ambassador does increase your buying power, as a larger percentage of your deck (assuming you're passing curses/estates) would be treasure cards after playing it.

I was careful and said "that-turn buying power."  Presumably on some level, every (not totally stupid) buy you make increases your buying power.  (EDIT:  Or increases your VP total, or both.)

406
Game Reports / Re: Opening Response
« on: August 04, 2011, 02:46:39 pm »
I feel like University/CR is the way to go here.  Your opponent is giving you a little free trashing with the Bishop, which will help, he isn't signaling an immediate attack via Sea Hag, so you've got some time to get your first (slow) Universities into play, and obviously University lets you buy your CRs easier, even if you trash your money heavily.  And of course you get built in +buy from CR.  Throw in a Mountebank (off your first University, probably) to slow your opponent down (and chuckle if he's going to try to use a Bishop to counter a Mountebank), maybe another Mountebank once your deck starts to fire, and bob's your uncle.

Obviously it's a bit chancy because of the potion cost of University and the opportunity for your opponent to swap into fairly nasty attacks that could swamp your engine.  But he didn't get a lot of buying power in his opening turns, and there's a decent chance he won't get Mountebank during turns 3/4 (lesse: 1/6 that his Silver doesn't get into turns 3/4, and then if it does get into turns 3/4, at least some chance that it doesn't come with 3 [Coppers|Bishop]), and also at least some chance that he doesn't buy Mountebank, since he didn't go gonzo for it at opening, and will be chancing terminal conflicts (especially if he's deck-thinning).

I don't know, I probably have a bias in favor of cards/actions engines, but I'd chance it.  Cutpurse seems like a lower risk/lower reward option.  It's less likely to screw you, but also less likely to utterly dominate.

EDIT:  So, we basically agree that Bishop on turn 1/2 is probably a mistake, right?  It's a single-card trasher that gives you the buying power of Copper, and it's a terminal in a set where your opponent is never going to get +2 Actions (because if you don't get Potion in turns 1/2, University is obviously a mistake), and there are at least two other very strong terminals (Mountebank, Council Room), one of which is a hand-size increaser?  I don't feel like Cutpurse capitalizes on your opponent's mistake.  It's just a reasonable starter.  It's probably a better starter than Bishop.  But Potion seems like it potentially capitalizes on your opponent's mistake because the problem with University/CR is that it will take too long to get going, but your opponent has chosen a fairly slow opening.

407
Game Reports / Re: Fishing Village/Torturer countered
« on: August 04, 2011, 02:33:06 pm »
I would have probably put a bigger focus on Library for drawing my cards.

The problem with Library as a card drawer is that, first, it's totally incompatible with any of the other card drawers on the table, and it's only really compatible with Fishing Villages every other turn.  That said, if I had taken Library from the start...  I don't know.  It's a possibility.  I've never really put together a Fishing Village/Library engine, don't know how they perform.

I took Torturer on the basis that it's not only cards/actions, it's a brutal attack.

Torturer is pretty counter-intuitive in such an ambassador deck, as your opponent can freely take the curse and send it back to you.

I definitely underestimated the extent to which the "Curses go into your hand" part of Torturer sets up a good Ambassador return.  And I think that Phoenix played his Torturer choices very well, making good decisions about when to accept Curses and when to hand-size reduce.

That said, he only had 3 Ambassadors.  One of the ways I felt a little abused by chance was the degree to which he (with basically 5 card hands until the very late game) seemed to have Ambassadors in hand whenever my engine fired.  I knew that Ambassadors would return some curses, of course, but I felt like it was the classic "sure, your Chapel can trash Curses, but then it's not trashing other things" dichotomy where he'd end up spending so much time fighting off the Curses that his deck wouldn't be able to improve.  After all, Ambassador is a terminal that doesn't add to your that-turn buying power.

Again, I really think that Fishing Village vs normal Village hurt me here.  Fishing Village + Torturer on the turn FV is played only gets you 1 card advantage.  FV on turn 2 + a Torturer gives you a 2 card advantage, for the FV's that were played the turn before, but if you do draw more FV and Torturers there, you're back to only 1 card advantage on that turn.  The point of a cards/action engine is to set up mega-turns, and the way that FV is better on turn 2 than turn 1 really compromises the ability to chain them together.  If I had been drawing my whole deck or close to it in the mid game, I don't think his Ambassadors would have been nearly as much of a problem -- one or two Ambassadors of my own could have more-reliably returned the curses back to him, and ultimately that's a game I win -- if I'm Cursing him with Torturer + Ambassador, that's going to work better than him Cursing me with just Ambassador, and if his deck gets a little more bloated, then he stops reliably drawing his Ambassadors, especially with FVs to chain them (or he buys more Ambassadors and has buying power problems).

408
Game Reports / Re: Fishing Village/Torturer countered
« on: August 04, 2011, 02:23:08 pm »
You also bought a bridge that really never accomplished anything, could def. have been ambassador.  Turn 9 should have been the ambassador.  It may already have been too late, but at least the turn 12 "pass the turn with torturer/bridge in hand" wouldn't have happened.

Completely true that the Bridge never accomplished anything.  I was at that point expecting a couple more "draw entire deck or substantial portion thereof" turns and wanted the bridge to set up some big buys.  It never happened.

409
Game Reports / Re: Fishing Village/Torturer countered
« on: August 03, 2011, 08:02:05 pm »
As is almost always the case, the winning strategy would have been to open Ambassador- in this case, either with Fishing Village or a second Ambassador.  Torturer engines are very strong, but dedicated Ambassador beats just about any other strategy 90 percent of the time, especially when you can pass your junk more than once a turn, as you certainly could here.

I don't feel that there was a problem with skipping the Ambassador first turn (EDIT:  Of course, he did too).  His deck wasn't faster than mine -- it only bloomed later.  I clearly should have picked up Ambassador a little earlier than I did, but I figured that if I got a cards/actions engine going, I could pick up an Ambassador, use it virtually every turn, and have the best choice of what junk I wanted to send him.

It didn't happen, obviously.  But why not?  It felt really frustratingly like I'd get either my villages or my card drawers, not together.  Looking through the log, that's not quite true -- it was fairly often the case that I'd get one or two card drawers with some additional actions in my pocket.  What didn't seem to happen was getting an actual chain together -- card drawers into more villages + card drawers.

My deck got increasingly bogged down in the mid-end game, so that becomes more explicable towards the end.  But I'm starting to think that the problem was that I just underestimated how hard it is to put together Village/Torturer without the +1 Card from a normal Village card.  Ordinarily, Fishing Village essentially gives you that (on the next turn), and I think of it as "just better" than Village, but when you're doing a cards/action engine, you want the immediate gratification in order to draw more villages/+cards.

410
Game Reports / Fishing Village/Torturer countered
« on: August 03, 2011, 07:09:38 pm »
Can I get an analysis of this game?  I thought for sure that I had it in the bag when my fishing village/torturer engine started firing, but my opponent eventually returned 9 (!) curses to me with Ambassadors and won the game.

Did I get unlucky or was his the winning strategy?  I felt like I got a little abused by chance towards the mid/late game, but perhaps not enough to make a huge difference.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201108/03/game-20110803-160359-369bc9af.html

411
Of course you can also put a Platinum aside, but you might want to use it for this turn yourself.

Though if you really think that you will get MORE use out of a high-value card than your opponent will, well... sounds to me like you've already won the game.

412
If you have a strong early lead and she has a brutal late-game card like that, you might try going for Provinces instead of Colonies -- win while you're ahead, before she can do a lot of damage to you with her Possessions.  As rrenaud says, getting rid of your Ambassadors is a good idea once you've done your early-game damage.

413
Dominion General Discussion / Must-Buy Cards?
« on: July 20, 2011, 07:33:05 pm »
Are there cards -- besides the obvious high-end treasures/VP cards -- that you feel like you will almost always buy if they're on the table, even without any particular support from the rest of the kingdom cards?  Like, say, 85%+ of the time, regardless of the board?

I can't think of too many, besides the Cursing Attacks.  Maybe Tournament.

414
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Enlighten me about Gardens
« on: July 19, 2011, 03:38:32 pm »
Mint's trashing might seem counterproductive, but I've even used Mint to copy treasure like in this game.

Note that that's a hybrid strategy -- you guys had bought out all the Duchies and three Provinces.  And it was a considerably longer game than you'd expect a pure Gardens strategy to go (it was 28 turns, while your pure-Gardens game took 20 turns).

It's hard to imagine Mint being worthwhile in a pure Gardens strategy.

(I realize that you note that those are games which start in a normal economy, but I thought that Mint in particular needed to be called out as "not a good buy in a pure Gardens strategy."  Like, Hoard would be awesome if you could ever afford it in pure Gardens, so if you somehow end up with $6 (Woodcutter + 4x Copper?), go for Hoard!  But Mint would actually be counterproductive in most Garden strategies.)

415
I just looked at the code for NGN - Tortured Village. Do you realize it will never buy gold and only ever buy one silver (well, okay, it will buy more once the villages run out)? This is a serious flaw in its design, I think, as even great engines can usually take a little more money than that.

I modified it to buy up to 2 Golds and up to 2 Markets (so that it can potentially buy 2 Provinces in one turn if it draws out its deck).  That makes it do a lot better against BMU, but it still is soundly whipped, 64.2% of the time.

416
I didn't think it would be THAT bad. How did you set it up?
But yes, it's pretty well known that the optimal strategy for a board with the basics, village, and smithy includes exactly 0 villages, a couple to a few smithies, and the rest money.

I was surprised to see no NGN - Village/Smithy that I could tell, so I just modified Village Torturer to replace Torturer with Smithy.

417
Unfortunately, Torturer and Vault are both cards the sim plays poorly. But an interesting note is that my bot called 'lighthouse defense', which is basically big money except that it prefers lighthouse to silver (and hence loses rather pathetically to big money), absolutely crushes Tortured Village - 77-18. So actually, going for the cards/draw engine it provides is NOT worth it.
Edit: Not worth it without the attack, that is, obviously.

How does Lighthouse Defense do against Village/Smithy?

EDIT:  To semi-answer my own question, Big Money Ultimate crushes Village/Smithy 95% of the time, so I think that all this indicates is that simple engines with no +buy, or set up the way the simulator uses them, are not fast enough to beat BM in a Province game.

418
But Vault, Vault kills torturer chains. If the three cards in the kingdom are Village, Vault, and Torturer, I'm going Vault every day of the week. By the time the chain comes up, I will be able to take those curses to ensure me my 5th, 6th province.

Hmmm, I don't think I believe you.  To Science!

Geronimoo's Dominion simulator doesn't have a "Pure Vault Strategy" that I saw, so I made one, that basically said: get two Vaults, otherwise do ultimate Big Money.  I paired it up against NGN - Tortured Village.  Tortured Village wins about 62% of the time.

Am I improperly translating your Vault strategy?  Care to mess around with it?

EDIT to add:  COMBO - Caravan/Vault also loses to NGN - Tortured Village.

EDIT2:  Though the simulator may not play properly in response to Torturer.  It looks to me like the opponent of a Torturer always chooses the discard instead of the Curse, which is, after all, my point on what they shouldn't do.

419
There are actually a lot of ways to beat torturer chains other than with your own chain.
Gardens deck, Watchtower, sometimes library, moat, lighthouse, strong trashing, basically any other curse-giver, embargo, often vault, sometimes horse traders, and, most importantly, just being faster. Heck, I'm not sure if Village+torturer is dominant on even half the boards it's on.

I certainly agree with the overall point that there are ways to beat torturer chains other than your own chain.

But, to pick nits:  I don't really buy that library, watchtower, moat, trashing, or vaults are very effective counters 90% of the time.

If you buy enough reactions like moat or watchtower to have them in your hand consistently, you've probably screwed over your own deck pretty badly in the process, and village/torturer is nasty in that in addition to screwing your opponent over, it's a decent deck just as a cards/actions engine.

Library is fine if you have a ton of these expensive, terminal Actions, and you can guarantee that you get hit by at most 2 Torturers per turn.  I don't think that's a realistic scenario.

I don't really get how you think Vault counters Village/Torturer at all.  Suck the 10 curses and discard them into Vault to turn them into effectively coppers?  That's a hell of a soft counter.



But perhaps we're getting lost in the weeds.  My ultimate point on Village/Torturer: the worst possible thing that you can do is say, "Oh, uh...  I'll lose several turns in a row to having 0-1 cards in my hand."  Either you should resign, or you should say, "I see a route to winning despite taking multiple Curses this turn," and accept the multiple Curses.  You can't beat the deck by not taking any actions.

420
I think that there are two almost entirely disjoint modes of playing Torturer:

1.  Your opponent plays at most one Torturer per turn.


Mode 1 basically means Don't Play Torturer in two-player, since in this case your opponent will clutter his deck if he gets enough torturers to consistently attack you.

Uh...  not really.

I mean, take a well-functioning Laboratory (or Alchemist) deck: it might have one Torturer that it consistently plays most turns.

Or take a well-functioning modified Big Money deck that bought a single Torturer as its one terminal card-drawer action -- just as good as a Smithy, plus an attack, for just $1 more.  Reasonable, particularly if you get $5 early.  This deck doesn't hit you with a Torturer every round, of course, but you still will have to decide how to respond to the Torturer several times, and it wasn't a mistake to buy that Torturer.

Torturer is a pretty decent card even if you don't activate Village/Torturer and give your opponent the stark choice of "eat 10 Curses or have no cards in your hand."  But it's a VERY different card if you can count on "no more than 1 Torturer per turn" versus "potentially 2+ Torturers per turn."

421
I think that there are two almost entirely disjoint modes of playing Torturer:

1.  Your opponent plays at most one Torturer per turn.

In this case, it's fairly rare that you will want to take the Curse.  The situations where you do should be pretty obvious, for example: there's one Colony/Province on the board left, you have $8/$11 in hand, you can not discard 2 cards and still reach $8/$11, you will win on your turn if you buy the Colony/Province.  You have a Trash-For-Benefit card in your hand but do not have a card that you're willing to trash.  Depleting Curses will end the game in your victory.

Not a whole lot else.

2.  Your opponent has just activated a Village/Torturer deck.

Once Village/Torturer gets going, you can expect to get hit by 2+ Torturers every turn.  In that case, you have the choice of taking the curses or literally not being able to do anything.  The latter case obviously ends in your defeat.  So, yeah, you take the curses, and hope that your own Village/Torturer combo activates and makes your opponent take his share of the curses before you get to your full 10.

Though in my experience, whoever's Village/Torturer deck activates sooner Just Wins.  It's pretty hard to get Cards/Actions going if you're being cluttered up with Curses.  So if your opponent has suddenly made his deck click and you're eating multiple Torturers each turn, the correct reaction may be to resign.

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