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26
Dominion General Discussion / The Kingdom Design + Test (or SCIENCE!) Game
« on: February 05, 2013, 06:32:04 pm »
I'm not sure where to put this - if one of the admins wants to move it to an appropriate place, that'd be great.

I have had an idea for a couple months of having a long-running game, which will consist of two parts. First part is that one of the players will propose a kingdom of 10 cards (or eleven with a bane), which he hopes is not very easy to figure out in terms of the optimal strategy. Then other players (can't be the proposer) try to figure out what the optimal way to play *is*. Bonus points to proposer for tactical complexity, for needing to be reactionary to the opponent, for having different *types* of deck be viable, and most of all for having more strategies than 2 that appear viable. But basically the proposer gets points for the longer it takes to solve the kingdom, and the solvers get points the quicker they're able to do it.

If we're actually going to try to keep track of some running score, we'd need some particular point values for things, time limits, etc. But I figure we'd probably just be doing this for the fun of it, and possibly to try to figure out what kind of sets make for interesting ones, getting better as players, etc. etc. etc.

Anyway, the idea would be that once one set is done, by some consensus being established, we'd move on to the next person to get a chance to solve it. Oh, and we should give the proposer a chance to 'defend' his set by showing that the apparent consensus is wrong. And we'd be looking for evidence here of some sort - usually this is going to mean test games, which probably means you'll need collaboration between multiple solvers. Well, these are all details that can be worked out.

Let me know what you guys think, if you're interested, what ideas you have, etc.

27
Dominion Articles / Ambassador
« on: January 31, 2013, 06:27:04 pm »
I know there's already an article on the blog on ambassador, and I'm not trying to say it's a bad article in writing this. Only, Ambassador is an extraordinarily complicated card, and I wanted to add some beef to its analysis. In fact, if you are newer, you should go read it now, because I'm assuming you already have some basic familiarity with the card throughout this article.

I used to hate ambassador, but now, even in second position (and it has MASSIVE first player advantage), I'm pretty unlikely to veto it.

I should note that I don't think this is a definitive article on the card that will stand up to the test of time - it's too complicated for that. But I do hope that it will be found mostly insightful, if not all-encompassing, on down the line. For one thing, this has only the barest treatment of Dark Ages, since I've yet to play a game with ambassador and DA cards together. Further, this is entirely dedicated to the 2-player version of Dominion; ambassador plays entirely differently with more players, probably most significantly out of all the cards.

Strategy
What does Ambassador want?
The absolute number one thing to understand about making an ambassador is that you desperately want card draw - some way to increase your hand size (whilst still having an action left). Look at it this way - if you return two cards from your hand, and you haven't drawn anything, then that leaves you with a two card hand. Well, even the best two card hands are generally pretty lousy (unless you have card draw to increase them!). This can actually work sometimes, ambassador is that powerful, but you don't want to have to make it work if you don't absolutely have to (and more on that subject later on).

Looking at it another way, why are you thinning your deck out in the first place? Answer - to get rid of bad cards (and/or give them to your opponent). Right? Okay, but why? What makes them bad cards? Virtually every card actually gives you some kind of benefit over having no cards (exceptions being curse and some of the ruins and such); terminal actions can be worthless if you have too many, but generally why these things are bad is because they get in the way of more important cards. You draw them instead of drawing a better card. But of course, this is only a problem because you are limited in your draw. If you had unlimited drawing, you'd have no problem at all. So to the extent that you can be drawing through your whole deck even with things like copper and even estate in them, then they are actually good cards rather than bad. Of course, this comes with the caveat that you need to be able to keep drawing your deck through them, and its rare that you can do this indefinitely with lots of them. But if you can, then so much the better.

And here's where we come to a really important point about ambassador wars: one ambassador can counter two, over the long haul. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Ambassador War
Very often, both players go for ambassador, and take turns (often very many turns) flinging junk at each other in an attempt to win what is known as an 'ambassador war'. In such a situation, the thing which is in the foremost of your mind strategically is what I call one player getting 'snowballed under' - getting so flooded with junk, having such a high percentage of your deck be junk, that you basically can't do much of anything. You play maybe one action (usually none) in a turn, make maybe $4 or so on average, and buy something. For the whole game. It can be pretty depressing. Anyway, this is where the property of one ambassador countering two comes into play. Playing two ambassadors can only give two cards' worth of junk, which is the same amount which can be gotten rid of by a single ambassador. So a deck playing one ambassador consistently won't need to be taking on any water against one which can play two. Flinging different kinds of junk can make more of a problem, but over the course of two turns, you can get into a syncopated rhythm where you return two of one on one turn, then two of the other, then two of the first again, and keep yourself almost as clean anyway - just with one extra card of junk all the time. Actually this generalizes - for every different kind of junk card past the first, they can make you keep one extra junk in the deck all the time. But generally, there aren't very many different kinds of junk.

Of course, it's important to note that for this defense to be able to work, you need to be playing the ambassador every turn, which generally means drawing at least most of your deck. This underscores the importance of being able to draw cards, and it also means that at the beginning of the game, where you can't draw a super high proportion, you're vulnerable - hence the reason you very often want two ambassadors early on.

But the upshot of all this is, it's quite possible for nobody to get snowballed under, for neither player to lose the ambassador war, and for the game to just continue to go on, with an eventually more or less steady state, usually with some estate tennis going on. Now, you can try grabbing lots of extra ambassadors to really force through the snowballing, but it's basically just a losing proposition. On the one hand, to defend themselves, they only need to have half as many ambassadors as you need to attack with, but more important even than this is that once they get themselves thinned enough, it's just going to be more cost efficient to build up their draw in most cases.

Thus, in the ambassador war, you'd like to keep your deck squeaky clean, but you really need to work towards getting your engine up whilst of course all the time making sure you don't get snowballed under. Once that happens, you've generally just lost.

Villages
Still talking about what ambassador wants, well it is obviously a terminal action, and it's a card that wants to have an engine. So generally it needs sources of +actions - some kind of village. This will help you get two ambassadors played on a turn, which is often important in the early going, it will help you play draw cards most usually, and it will let you play the other juicy terminals you want to. You very often want LOTS of actions, so lots of villages can well be in order. The nice thing about ambassador is it makes the game long enough that you have the time to accumulate them.

Draw-to-X
Cards which draw to a fixed handsize can work really well with ambassador, because ambassador makes lots of cards disappear from your hand. The big thing to note, though, is that you're going to need just tons and tons of actions in order for that to work.

Cantrips
So, with ambassador, you're trying to thin your deck, and the clog problem is the reason you want to get rid of your junk. But cards with the cantrip property - at least +1 card, +1 action - are essentially 'free' cards; unlike treasures, victory cards, and actions that don't draw, they don't count against your effective deck size. So they go really well with ambassador. The best variants are those which give lab-like bonuses - that draw is really nice, as described above. Villages which draw, again like talked about above, are also quite beneficial.

But it's also worth talking about the third big category (there are some cantrips that fit into none of the three) of cantrip, which is some kind of peddler-variant. These help you build money while keeping card neutral, and so it's actually possible to build a deck from these and ambassador with no card draw, and have it be decently strong. If you ambassador your deck thin enough, you can play a big chain, make a bunch of money, and get some nice things. The best card here is unsurprisingly grand market, if you can get to it. Conspirator also gives good cash for the card, but it is a little risky in that you definitely need to get it in the right order with other cantrips to make sure it is activated.
Bad engines can work in the same way as this kind of deck; specifically, I'm referring to those where the drawing power is equal to moat's (and terminal) and the village nets no cards, such as festival or importantly, hamlet (hamlet can be cantrip, but not while also a village). If you can pick something up along the way with these, they work like cantrips that you need to get in the right order. Of course, with no other ancillary benefits, they wouldn't be worth it at all.
In either case, the biggest problem this kind of deck runs into is that it needs to be very thin to work right, which means that when it starts greening, it's very liable to falling apart pretty quickly. This makes it particularly vulnerable to things like slogs, but just not terribly strong overall anyway, considering its slow set-up - decently strong big money can usually beat it.

Fighting Ambassador Entirely
Few decks can beat ambassador when it has all its toys, but when its missing something, there are a number that can. And this is more of a sliding scale thing - the more things the amb deck is missing, the less strong the counter has to be.

Pseudo-Counters
It's very easy to look at a number of cards and think that, because ambassador tends to sink us in a bunch of a particular kind of card, other cards which make those cards useful can counter it. That is not a very clear sentence, so let me give examples. Counting house, we might expect to be great, because our deck will be huge and full of copper. Similarly, we might think apothecary or crossroads or baron will counter it nicely. But one of the big problems in trying to do this is that ambassador players don't have to pump you full of coppers for your counting house - they will start giving you estates; or if you have barons, they'll flood with copper.
The more of the pseudo-counters you have available, though, you can more get away with it - if you have something to deal with copper AND something that uses estates, it might work. But the tricky bit is that if you need some of them to collide right, the bigger your deck, the less likely this will happen.
Some of them, though, particularly the more engine-oriented ones, can help WITH the ambassador to get your deck up and running in the middle of the war, as they will defray the pain of what your opponent is flinging.

Slogs
One way to fight ambassador entirely is to go for a slog. Estates aren't so bad for you in a slog as in most other decks, and coppers are downright helpful. Horse traders is particularly noteworthy here, as it will trigger almost always, giving you nice six card hands to work with. Gardens of course benefits no matter what they give you, and so can be quite nice. Silk road will like the extra estates and can grow VERY powerful. And duke gives a long potential for points and forces them in some cases to get all the province quite quickly, or quickly for an ambassador game at any rate. In any of these cases, though, the ambassador deck should win if it has decent enough support; you definitely need to watch for slogs, though, with ambassador, particularly on the weaker boards for it, like those cantrip-centred decks discussed above.

The Rush
Ambassador is a very slow card, so Rushes tend to just float by it without noticing all that much, particularly as the extra cards here, like the slog, give extra points; and the speed at which rushes go helps out even moreso. Furthermore, lots of the engines that ambassador wants to go into are going to be curtailed against a rush, because they'll have to worry about getting 3-piled.

Combos
Nothing is safe from a really good combo deck, and ambassador is no exception. The attack can give you leverage against some of the more precarious ones, like the Golden Deck, and give you enough time to get an engine up to outrace others, but there are some decks - like chancellor/stash, or various other decks which have a way of manipulating their start hand (mega-scheme comes to mind) - which will be able to withstand you, no problem. Your best recourse here is either some kind of hand-size attack, or sometimes just to join them, and not go with ambassador.

Big Money
Big Money can blast right though ambassador under the right circumstances. Mostly this means that the money deck needs very good longevity. Jack can of course give this. Trader is good here, too, better than normal since it can turn the attack into quite a nice positive. Wharf can blow past, but then, if there's almost any village (in some cases not city or golem), you'll want to go engine with wharf and amb. Courtyard can sometimes get through, but it needs to be a weakish ambassador board. And the number one candidate is Vault. Vault only needs to be able to hit one gold or two silvers, and it doesn't matter what other junk is there, it's got a province. It's fast. And the drawback does not hurt it very much at all against an ambassador deck, which desperately needs more cards rather than quality. It can also guarantee at least a duchy on every vault play, and it gives very little to most ambassador decks.

Other Junking Attacks
Generally, trying to fight ambassador with junking attacks is a losing proposition - you give one junk, they return two and give you one. When playing the ambassador side, you will usually be able to get ahead, as though ambassador is pretty slow, the game will most often last more than long enough for the ambassador to come back. It's possible to use another junking attack in conjunction with ambassador, but generally if you do this, it should be largely because you want the ancillary benefit of the junker, more than the actual junking attack itself. The big exception here is mountebank, which actually gives two bits of junk rather than one, and of different kinds. This makes it hard for ambassador to deal with, and although it should *eventually* be able to, if the mountebank player can make the game end with halfway reasonable speed, it might not last long enough for this to matter.

Tactics
Trashing
Trashing can work against ambassador, but generally, if you are trying to thin, it's better to go with ambassador to do it, as it will keep on giving that persistent peppering and is generally stronger over the long haul. Of course, there are some exceptions to this, if the trasher is strong enough, and in the right circumstances. Masquerade has already been noted. Remake can work occasionally, but it's a little sketchy if there aren't gobs of great 3 and 4 cost cards you really really want. Steward gives you cards or money down the road, and so can be an option. And chapel has the virtue of costing 2 (if you get that split), and is generally a little faster to get off the ground, so if you can get your other components up lightning fast, it can be the way.

Let's look at the chapel case specifically to get a picture of what I'm talking about. Ambassador will sooner or later pass all of its starting cards to the chapel player. This will take at least 6, but often will be 7 plays. This means chapel will have to trash 16-17 cards, which would ideally be 4-5 plays, but more likely will be at least 6, given the fallout. All of which means that in terms of thinning, they look fairly similar. The advantage of chapel is that it's usually a little faster. But ambassador can be useful on down the line, which means that it's a pretty close call - and often dependent on whether there are nice cards for ambassador player to pick up while trashing down, or whether the speed of chapel will give it a decisive head-start on the engine building. Or if it's a 5-2 split.

Forge can of course take care of everything at once, but it will be hard to set this up. And everything else will markedly fail to ambassador in terms of deck thinning - if they are to make up for this, they have to do it in other ways (and sometimes this is possible).

Playing against the thin deck
Most of the methods that generally work against thin decks are good here, too. Handsize attacks are powerful (but not torturer!), even moreso than normal - but less potent in the early stages than they are against something like chapel. Council Room's downside isn't a big deal if they're drawing their deck anyway. Ditto on Governor for the cards. Governor for trashing is generally not so bad, either, as they won't be trashing copper or estate with it so much, but if there is something they might want to upgrade, you need to watch out. Bishop's drawback is almost entirely negated, though with the thin deck, ambassador will sometimes be able to get better use out of it than you. But actually the magic bullet here is masquerade. It gets you the drawing right there, and it's definitely faster at getting up to speed than ambassador. And against a thin deck, the passing can be downright attack-like. It isn't foolproof of course, so it still needs to watch out for getting snowballed under.

Ambassador's Recourse
The Curse Trick
If your opponent isn't fighting you at all, you can pull the trick where you buy a curse and then over some number of turns, pump all of the curses in the supply over to the opponent. This can clog them in a way that can't be pseudo-countered, and perhaps more importantly, give them a big stack of negative points.

It's important to know not to go for this too early. You want to really be snowballing them under, drawing your whole deck very reliably, before you go for this. And you almost never want to do this out of an ambassador war, unless you really really have it lock-down won. Because you're voluntarily grabbing extra bloat, and if you aren't very careful, and their deck is at all thin, it can let them right back in. In an ambassador war, to slam the door, you usually just want to build your engine and do something big for yourself with it.

It's also worth noting that due to three pile ending concerns, you should not give them the WHOLE stack all the time; often you want to leave one, and if one then usually two or three, so that they can't snap the game over before you are ready.

The Province Trick
On the last turn of the game, you often ambassador to reveal a province, returning none, so as to make sure the pile is empty at the end of a turn. Now it's true that you are usually going to win anyway if you're in a position to do this, but it can be important in some cases, particularly if your deck is getting to the point where it is going to start having trouble maintaining a running engine and/or the game is close (though, obviously it's not THAT close if you can spot a province).
This can also be done, of course, with colonies, but more important, with any pile which is going to end the game. So watch out for being able to force a three pile ending this way, it can actually win a decently high number of games.

Possession
I want to look specifically at possession for a second, as something which looks like it counters ambassador, and sometimes does, but actually usually ends up supporting it, but in a weird way. If you can possess a player who has ambassador and get their ambassador in a hand with, say province, you can have them make very generous diplomacy toward you by forcing them to gift you that province. This is an enormous point swing - but think about the case with 2 colonies - this is effectively a 30 point swing. But, usually a deck with ambassador is going to be able to play possession faster and more often than a deck without it, so it's not like you can just ignore amb. And this is particularly true in that you can ambassador them an ambassador. If possible, the answer to this dilemma is trashing - trash that ambassador, and trash to thin. But it's tough - you are almost never totally safe until the game is over.

Playing with Ambassador
Stop Cards
As alluded to above, the reason you have ambassador is to get rid or bad cards. More explicitly, you are thinning your deck to build up an engine. Until you have such an engine going, you want to have as few stop cards as possible. A stop card is any card which doesn't help you get through your deck any more - basically anything that doesn't draw. Now, ambassador itself is a stop card, but it helps you get rid of others so it's okay (but not too many! Three is almost always overkill, and I've never seen four or more be optimal). But anything else, you want to ask yourself, do you really need it? Because until you get to drawing most of your deck, most of these cards are poison to you. Now, sometimes you will need some - a silver or two, some kind of economy is necessary to get that engine up in the first place. But you really want to keep this as minimal as possible until your engine is up and you can handle them - even platinum could be an annoyance to you, because it can get in your way. So you want to keep your deck very tight, and then, once you've built up to where you can draw your whole deck, you start adding in some cards to help you build up your buying power and such, adding in extra drawing components at the same time to make sure you can keep drawing your deck. Eventually, you will almost always HAVE to go for some stop cards, which will risk your engine not firing some times, if for no other reason than most of the victory cards fit this criteria, and you almost always need them to win. But time your push towards these, particularly if it makes it reasonably likely for your engine to break sometimes, as late as you can get away with. Still, be cautious of three pile endings, as with any engine.

Two Copper or One Estate?
This question of what to return is an oft-asked one by ambassador players; if you have the same number of either card, you usually want to return the estate over the coppers, as copper do stuff for you (you can buy things, huzzah!), which while not great, is better than estate until very very very late in the game. But what about returning TWO coppers vs estate? Perhaps most important is when this question comes up on an early hand of A/C/C/C/E.
Long story short, in an ambassador war, you usually want to return two coppers, unless you have a good reason to go the other way. The reason being, two cards is one more than one, and your goal is to get thinner faster than the other guy, really; one fewer card is one fewer card to cycle through, which gets you through your deck and back to your important cards faster. It's also a more efficient use of the ambassador - you're getting your whole money's worth, which is important because you're probably going to have the chance to return the estate with a partner later on.
But okay, what's 'a good reason'? First and foremost, if returning the coppers leaves with insufficient money in your deck to buy anything meaningful down the line - i.e. if it will leave you with 1, or most often also 2, coppers in your deck total. You don't want to be in the position to have to buy coppers up, that defeats the purpose. Beyond this, you want to look at engine construction - if returning the estate lets you buy something which immediately helps you get your drawing up (Lab, maybe caravan, a smithy variant if - and only if - you have a high enough number of villages already) - then that looks much more attractive. You want to get that draw up. Basically, this means that you're more likely to return the estate in the midgame than the opening, where you're all about number of junk cards all the time - if you're already drawing your whole deck, the coppers are often even an advantage. Finally, if there are engine components which key off of one or the other, for one of you or more likely both, then return the thing which doesn't help the engine. Prime examples here are apothecary, which shoves you toward returning estates, and crossroads, which makes you really want to return coppers.
If you're not in an ambassador war, some of the same concerns apply, but you're much more likely to want to return the estate. The reason for this is that you will eventually clear your stuff out anyway, but you want to have something good going on when you do, since you don't have much impediment, so it's a little more important to be able to get to those key cards (usually 5-costs) a little faster; you often want to get not only the key card itself, but one step further, the card which will allow you to get the key card. Also, in such situations, usually either a) you're just going to destroy them, because they aren't going ambassador; or b) they are playing some kind of deck that doesn't mind coppers NEARLY so much as estates. Of course, use some sense - if they are mountebanking you, thinness is way important again, and you do still want a thin deck quickly, so if you're likely to be able to get up to your key cards as quickly returning the coppers anyway, go for it.

How should you open?
Depends on the board.


Okay, I'll give you more than that. You need to look at what's available, more precisely what you'd want, at each of the price points. I'm a fan, in general, of going Ambassador/Ambassador (hereafter A/A), particularly on a board with a village, which will eventually let you play both. But different things can pull you different ways. Strong 2-costs for your deck (say, native village, crossroads, hamlet) are going to pull you toward A/A, as often you'll get early hands of A/C/C/E/E or A/C/C/C/C and be able to grab a 2-cost. Good early 5s (Lab and variants, mostly) will pull your toward A/Silver (/A), as the silver will help you get there faster. Only, here you have to be careful and really think about what you're doing. You probably aren't going to get the $5 on the first shuffle anyway (though you nicely have no collision). If you draw A/S/C/C/C here, you basically always want to return 2 coppers (and buy an ambassador) over returning 0, because while a nice draw card is nice and can compensate for a little missed thinning, 2 cards' worth is almost always too much (in a war, anyway; you can consider 0 if not in a war). If it's a really nice early 5, though, you can roll those dice - and take a little comfort in that you won't have any collision right away.

4-cost cantrips make excellent partners for ambassador, in general. Caravan gets you started on that draw you want; tournament gives you a little economy; and spice merchant, while not *strictly* a cantrip, might be best of all, since it helps in on the trashing. (Ironmonger from DA, one presumes, should be EXCELLENT here). Sometimes, though, you'll want to open A/A anyway. In these matchups, A/A usually gets a little advantage if they can get through early without colliding, but the cantrip gets a somewhat bigger advantage if there is a collision from the opponent. This balance usually is on the side of the cantrip, which is safer, by a little bit, but with sufficiently strong 2s, and depending on the exact cards available, the exact cantrip, etc., A/A is sometimes the way to go. Even wishing well can sometimes work here as a cantrip to pair with Ambassador on the opening.

Pairing Ambassador with another trasher is certainly a viable option on many boards. Chiefly, we're looking at remake and steward here - chapel is overkill, and most of the other trashers just don't cut the mustard, and a second amb should be preferred. To want to go with remake, you will generally want to have useful 3-cost cards - just silver doesn't really cut it, because that's a stop card; generally you want some kind of cantrip and/or village, but sometimes you can get away with a draw card, like watchtower or oracle, with good villages elsewhere. Steward is nice in that it turns into a component after a couple of shuffles, and has very good flexibility; since you eventually don't need two ambassadors anyway, steward can be a nice replacement for the second ambassador. You still want to thin early, preferring ambassador to thin rather than steward, if you can get 2 cards back with ambassador anyway.

Finally, I'd like to look at quarry. It's an interesting card here, and I don't have tons of experience, but the principles ought to hold - if you have 4-, 6-, and especially 5-cost actions you want to get quickly, it can be very nice. The better the 2-costs, once again, the more you want to go A/A - Quarry can always pick up 3-cost actions as well as 2-costers, so there's no advantage there. It is a stop card, but almost any time you'd want to get a silver, plus other times with pretty juicy 5s, you'll want to go quarry. A/A vs A/S/A is close, so it's natural for A/Q/A to be a little better than A/A most of the time, though again, it is a fairly close-run thing.

What if there aren't any villages (or any gettable villages within a reasonable amount of time?)
If there's no villages at all, I would strongly consider going without ambassador. If you think it's necessary anyway, though, go more heavily for A/S than normal, as the collision will hurt you at some point. If you think ambassador is still important though, you want to try to get a thinner deck (well, you wanted it for some reason), which means that you want 2 ambassadors usually (though more apt, again, for A/S/A than normally), unless your opponent is going Amb-less, in which case you're likely safe with one. This can be a bit hard to judge sometimes though. This also makes the ambassador/cantrip openings no-brainers.


Example Games
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20130110-192703-46d1ff42.html
Now, my play here, especially early, is no paragon of perfect play, but there are some important points to make. First, the only village is throne room, which especially early on, isn't so hot as far as villages go, particularly for getting an engine up. Wharf is an EXCELLENT drawing card, and cellar helps me get around to my ambassador as often as can be, providing really nice cycling here - this all contributes to the A/S/A opening choice. The cellar gets used liberally, and this is really important - the deck is mostly junk, we want to get to the important two to three cards as much as we can. But the bigger point is that my esteemed opponent focuses too much on getting silvers into grand markets. Now, don't get me wrong, GM is really nice. But getting reliable drawing up is the biggest factor, and with throne room to give you the big chains eventually, that really needs to be the focus - everything else comes later. I am able to do this, and it gives me control of the game. In fact, I hardly care about GM at all here, as it's a nice card to have, but not essential to the deck - and I can always HoP into it later.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20130128-151239-44c16fe3.html
Here we see a classic Ambassador/Cantrip opening, with a second ambassador picked up later on. I prioritize apprentice as the first 5-cost, as villages will take a while to come by, and it can plow through estates. Fool's Gold is important here, as I anticipate eventually having a very thin deck. And then the focus goes to overbuilding a strong engine, making myself unbustable. We also see the three ambassador plan as ineffectual.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20130130-112807-293d0abf.html
This one shows how moutnebank can be effective as a junk-dealer as well as the importance of getting the drawing up quick, with hunting party - which also helps a lot in a junked deck.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20130110-135942-84701763.html
Here, there are LOTS of psuedo-counters, and so I go for that route. Counting house, horse traders, and silk road all come up very big for me, but of course ambassador is nice and strong itself, and with island, menagerie, pawn, and far-and-away most importantly colonies to support, even despite my pretty good luck, -Stef- is able to eek it out.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20130126-160124-3e5bb9c0.html
Here I go for A/S/A against Obi Wan Bonogi's A/A, looking for an early stables. This, with not the best shuffle luck (look at the differences in turns 3/4), get me behind. However, the really interesting bit here is the midgame. He has $5 in coins in his deck. I am fairly swamped with little junk, but I do have enough stables to draw most of my deck, and about a turn and a half lead when we do start greening. He wisely keeps his course and just pounds the stables - the important thing is to keep his engine from breaking. I follow him down the path all the way until they're out, and then the race is on. Basically he needs my deck to fail to produce province twice more than his before they all run out. As his deck is in quite a bit better shape than mine AND he invested enough time picking up stables to stabilize it, this is a high-percentage play, and it pays off for him.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20130131-154825-fea21e40.html
Here I hedge my bets a little with the opening (and my ambassador serves to slow him down a good bit), but mostly ride trader and gardens as effective counters, particularly with the engine not being particularly great shakes.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20130201-130943-859bad7e.html
Here I use ambassadors, cities, and smithies to build up a strong engine. This gives me a very powerful lead, but I am careless in grabbing too many duchies, and a little bad luck on not being able to connect things then totally kills me. I could have had this easily if I'd held off and made sure my engine was in better shape before plowing through the embargoed duchies so far.

28
Dominion Articles / Board Breakdown #1 (My version of Dominion Academy)
« on: January 12, 2013, 03:17:34 pm »
Take a look at the following kingdom:
cards in supply: Council Room, Duchess, Jack of All Trades, Nobles, Potion, Remake, Saboteur, Scrying Pool, Talisman, Throne Room, and Warehouse

Okay, think about it for a second, try to figure out what you would do.
Alright, let’s break it down together.
I hope it’s fairly clear that there’s no potential for a slog, rush, or combo deck.
How about Big Money – this is always possible, so what are the best few big money variations, and how good are they?
The first thing I would notice is pure jack of all trades. This gets to 4 provinces pretty fast, around 14 turns in a vacuum or a mirror, and has pretty good longevity after that. This is pretty much always reasonably possible.
There’s Big Money/Council Room and or BM/Nobles. The former of these is fairly decent but not great, the latter pretty mediocre.
There’s also some mixed strategy – probably Jack into council room, maybe some nobles at some point. This should be pretty darn strong on average.
Which of the Big Money options is the strongest?
In a vacuum, none of them. You have to adapt to what your opponent does (more on this later). Almost surely, though, you won’t want to get just BM/Council Room or BM/Nobles. If you’re going BM, jack should be part of the plan.
Putting it another way, if you're against most engines, you'll want more jack power, for the longevity, but in a mirror, you want to pick up council room sooner - there's a bit of adaptability you should have.

How about engines – are they possible? What are the viable engine options here?
Sure, they’re possible. The first engine you can look at is Remake into warehouses, throne rooms, and some of the draw cards – probably you will want +buy at some point, so at least one council room, but generally you will want nobles, as they don’t draw for your opponent and also give you points, which will be useful at the end of the game. This engine is good, but it is slow, and it speeds the opponent up, which means it’s prone to not getting up in time. This definitely can't beat the money strategies we've already seen.
You can also build the same engine with Jack, possibly omitting remake (but probably not) This engine is reliant on treasures for its income, so the silver gaining of jack is really not that bad – you are going to otherwise have to buy some cash at some point anyway. This is still slow though, and more prone to not coming together to get rolling in a timely manner, though if you can, it has a bigger payoff. The Jack also goes with warehouse pretty well. This still can't beat the money strategies we've seen.
Finally, there’s a scrying pool engine. Remake for trashing, along with warehouse for sifting. This deck wants to be pretty pure actions, for the scrying pools, but it’s going to need some money – this is where duchess comes in. Of course, this well help your opponent fix the top of their deck, but you also slow that down off the scrying pool. This is a much more potent engine, drawing-wise, but it really needs a big payoff at the end, as it’s also slow to set up. This might be able to beat the money strategies we've seen, and it certainly kills the other engines, effectively making them non-viable on the board. Whether it beats money for sure will take some extra thought, beyond this quick look.
Any of these engines want lots of throne rooms, and they can all benefit from saboteur in many cases, provided there are enough actions to spare.

Okay, so what’s the decision?
The decision, at first, is just what opening you want to take. You should, in many cases, maintain some flexibility.
There are a few options as to what you can do, and on each you want to have contingency plans to play it slightly different depending on what your opponent does.

Option one: Jack/Silver. If you do it for money (which, here, you should), you can later decide if and when you want your other actions – council room, second jack, nobles – but this should depend on what your opponent does. The more they go money, the more you want to go council room for your second action; it is faster than jack, and that jack is a draw-to-X is going to mitigate the drawback somewhat if your opponent is going heavily jack. The more they go engine, though, the more you probably want a second jack – it gives more longevity, and it pumps you full of cards to deal with potential saboteur plays. Incidentally, in none of the money decks do you want a remake – it is too slow, and jack already gets rid of estates for you.
Option two: Jack/Warehouse. This is probably still a money deck, though it *can* go more engine-y. The idea for this is to play the jack more often; this doesn't go as well with council room as with double-jack, but it goes pretty well with double-jack against an engine, if you somehow know your opponent is going for that right up front. If they go for money though, you're in a bit worse shape, though it's not huge.
Option three: Remake/warehouse. Remake is definitely an engine card, so you want the cycling up faster to get the trashing up faster, and to trash what you want, and you aren’t so keen on getting 5-6 super fast, so you shouldn’t go for silver. You can build this into any of the engines, depending on what you like and what your opponent does; this is extremely flexible between engines, but what your opponent does will probably not affect which direction you want to go SO much.
Option four: Potion/warehouse. Here, you are going straight for the scrying pools, and you want to get them up as fast as possible. The warehouse gives you good opportunity to do this, as it helps cycle you fast. This is the fastest way to start drawing your deck every turn. You want to get a remake asap (but not over scrying pool, or you should have opened remake), and then see what’s happening. You might remake into some silvers, but generally you want to buy duchesses over them, as the pools will draw better. And throne room quickly. This is not a flexible opening.
Okay, so what’s best?
Honestly, I don’t know. I would play potion/warehouse here. Or if I get 3/4, particularly as player 2, I might open warehouse and just go the opposite of what my opponent does in terms of potion/jack - playing contrarion at least makes things more fun, if not necessarily objectively better. Though here, if they go for the engine, I do like jack/warehouse anyway, and if they go for money, I do kind of like the engine.
What actually happened in the game?
My opponent went pretty squarely for the jack plan into double jack. I had a 2/5 and went duchess/potion. Maybe remake first was better, I don’t know. And maybe on 4/3 I would have gone jack and this game would have been long forgotten as ‘another jack game’. Anyway, he gets out to a pretty good lead, and I build build build up the engine. LOTS of throne rooms. Unfortunately, the only source of by is the council room (I don’t need the draw), but I feel compelled to get it, because I need that buy. He gets the second jack, which is the correct response against my strong engine – so good on him there. Eventually I get a few more duchesses, and some nobles, and a couple saboteurs, and I start going to town. The spy of the scrying pool is really important for me. On turn 14, I make a big mistake of trashing throne room off of a remake, rather than warehouse which I wanted. Anyway, I use my scrying pools after a while to hunt for provinces. He has so much other stuff that it’s hard, but I hit some. And I’m stocking up on nobles. At the end of the game, he starts to have serious threats of three piling me – with duchesses, not incidentally. On my last turn, I get very close to being able to turbo remake some of the excess throne rooms for the last duchies and then go out for the last province and end it, but it’s not quite there for me, and he wins (his deck never slows down all that much; it’s a jack deck). The next turn, it would have been very important for me to remake superfluous throne rooms into duchies BEFORE saboteuring him, as this lets me stop him from replacing Provinces with duchies. Well, anyway, there wasn’t a next turn, as he was able to end it. But a very interesting game – I can only wonder what would have happened, if anything different, if I hadn’t misclicked on that remake play, or if I had a 4/3 opening, or whatever.
I am also not totally sure whether I should have gone after his Jacks more, and sooner, with my saboteurs. Same question on the golds. Well, at any rate, it was an interesting one.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20130110-143954-ae76da64.html

The final analysis:
I really don’t know what is best here, to be honest. On a 5/2 I’m very inclined to go for the engine, because duchess does very little for you money-wise, and you don’t really want to open one of the fives. I’m actually pretty inclined to go for it anyway, I think, off the potion/warehouse. But again, I’m not sure – jacks into money is really strong and resilient as well.


Let me know what you guys think of the format, and as always, comments, questions, thoughts, suggestions, are all very much appreciated.

29
Feedback / Filtering What gets shown.
« on: January 11, 2013, 07:15:13 pm »
Apologies if this has been asked before - I couldn't find it on a quick glance - is it possible to filter out particular *threads*, or can you only do it on a board-by-board basis?
Thanks in advance,
WW

30
Dominion Articles / Big Money
« on: January 09, 2013, 08:34:23 pm »
This is the fifth and final article in my series on dominion deck types. It deals with big money, which fits between engines and slogs, completing the deck type wheel.

What characterizes Big Money?
Basically, it gets the bulk of its income from treasures bigger than copper, so silver, gold, platinum, fool's gold, venture, etc. It also doesn't cycle particularly quickly.

Why Big Money?
The type is pretty fast to get to a certain point. This is because it is extremely efficient. You don't underbuy very significantly or very often, and your deck doesn't have any ancillary or support cards. Everything is there directly to get you points or to be points.

How can I play big money?
Like Engines, there are a number of different types of big money deck.

Terminal Draw
http://dominionstrategy.com/2012/06/13/terminal-draw-big-money/

Terminal Non-draw
This is money and a few non-drawing terminal cards - more than you would get in a terminal draw big money deck, because they're less likely to collide. The ancillary benefits the terminals provide improves on straight money, generally significantly enough at some point that you should buy a handful extra terminals, risking some collision. Particularly good cards here include Merchant Ship, Swindler, and Monument.

Engine Hybrid
You can start adding villages (typically you want them to be money-producing) to the terminal non-draw decks, and this doesn't really make them an engine, without draw, but you end up playing a bunch of actions. Also, you will sometimes add a little nonterminal draw to the terminal non-draw money deck, and this can maintain a money feel. Do both, and you are creeping into engine territory. A weak dividing line is how often you will pass up gold for a cheaper component, though this isn't foolproof.

Treasure Flood
Here, you gain a lot of treasure cards, usually silver via Jack of All Trades, Trader, Bureaucrat et al., but occasionally golds through treasure map, tunnel, or hoard.

General Considerations
  • http://dominionstrategy.com/2012/02/27/the-keys-to-big-money-money-density-and-opportunity-cost/
  • Alternate VP is really bad for big money. It helps basically every other kind of deck more, largely by making the game longer.
  • Other than terminal draw (which despises them), these decks readily accept some useful cantrips. Particularly peddler-types.
  • Other than treasure-flood-types, the biggest problem that these decks tend to run into is stalling - they run out of steam pretty readily. Courtyard, with its ability to smooth out draws, Embassy and Vault, with their ability to discard unneeded green without a problem (note that it's the same group of cards that can shrug off terminal collision!) and wharf, because it's wharf (and plays almost like an engine even in BM), are also decently resilient here - unsurprisingly, they also translate to colony games decently well, which isn't true of most any other BM variant. The on-gain ability of Mandarin is a big help against stalling as well.
  • Trashing helps money decks, but not by a lot - unless it gives you some other benefit, it's not worth the opportunity cost
  • Scaling Trash for benefit CAN do this, particularly if you can use it on estate early. But the main point is that in the late game, it helps the stalling problem by for instance turning a province into another province (remodel and salvager can basically do this directly, apprentice usually can as well).
  • Noble brigand usually kills you dead
  • Handsize attacks are particularly brutal (especially against silver-flooders) against big money, moreso than other deck types, as generally a money deck needs most of those cards. Ghost ship is the biggest offender here.

Matchups
Against Slogs
Against a slog, you are generally going to have sustainability issues. Treasure-floods can do well, but otherwise you are going to need to get enough provinces fast enough, and then contest their main VP source afterwards. This will meet with varying success based on the particular versions of each deck you're playing, but in general it's not so hot. On the plus side, this is one of the reasonably rare situations where all the VP chip cards really help you. Sometimes it's also possible to plan ahead and just build a very sustainable deck to piledrive or gain a huge lead on provinces quickly enough. But not often.

Against Rushes
Here, you need to get enough points out of your big VP card before they are able to end the game. This doesn't happen all that often, but for some of the stronger BM versions, it certainly can. This is actually one of the better matchups for Big Money. If they green too early, they won't be able to end, and you can amass enough points to overcome their max (typically this is 8 alt VP cards at 3-4 points each, so 4-5 provinces most often, though with estates, this will rise to 6 in a lot of cases - plan accordingly!). If you do this, you're in good shape. Sometimes you can contest the last one or two of their alt-VP cards; if you can do this, it's really good, as it cuts into their ability to win by hitting a new plateau or switching to slog. However, you need to be REALLY careful, because if you don't have enough of a lead after doing this, you are helping them pile things out, which is their whole game plan.

Against Combo
Basically you usually have to either pre-empt their combo (a province a turn is not so hot if you have the lead and they can't buy provinces because it will end the game) or end the game before it is set up. Whether you can do this is extremely game specific, but in general, it's not a great shot. As always, also watch for three pile ending possibilities.

Against Engine
This is actually the best reason to go big money in a lot of cases. There are a few ways you can win. One is to three pile them - know when you can apply pressure on this, and very often, go for it over smaller VP cards like duchy or especially estate. This is pretty rare if they know what they're doing though, as you can't gain stuff that quickly. The biggest way to win is by getting to 50% of the VP before they can. After this, you might really stall, but it won't matter (unless they can attack it back out of you!). In practice, slightly below 50% is often fine, because you can cruise for the last point or two in a lot of cases, and sometimes even without 50%, they're going to be unable to get enough without triggering a three pile ending first. Of course, the major problems with this approach come when 50% is a LOT of points (or when they can slow you down a lot) - with colonies, 50% is forever. Similarly with those alt-VP cards. Perhaps most important is chips, which are either infinite or so close that it won't matter. In these cases (and a few others), you are forced into pile-driving provinces (or colonies). If they are playing well, they WILL NOT HELP YOU unless absolutely forced to do so, so prepare to buy ALL of them from the start - the same is largely true when going for 50% of the VP, you want to plan your most efficient path to it from the start.

Vs Big Money (mirror)
This is the part of big money which has best been studied, and which most of the stuff that's out there covers. You need to have SOME trump on your opponent - in some cases, this is greater longevity (this is particularly true, for instance, in monument decks). In most cases, it turns into a rush for provinces. It's extremely difficult to get four more duchies than your opponent and THEN get the last province after that, so if you can get to five provinces, you're fairly well golden. The real trick can sometimes come in the race to four. In the mirror, you have to green fast, which means there isn't a lot of longevity (excepting treasure floods), and not a ton of room to duchy dance. But if you can get better longevity than your opponent and they can't blitz out to a 5 provinces early or anything, then you are good to go duchy dancing, and try to win that way.

31
Game Reports / An Annotated Endgame
« on: January 08, 2013, 11:16:43 pm »
With -Stef-'s recent excellent article, I have been rethinking my approach to different kinds of articles and what goes where. There's annotated games, which can be good for lots of stuff, but I think their real strength is in showing more tactics and short-term, adaptive strategy - i.e. how someone adjusts to the game state, draws, and what the opponent does. This doesn't SO much lend itself to the preview kind of concept, and it is what I am doing below.

There's what Stef did, which he called Dominion Academy, where you look at a board, the best few strategies (best one or two of each type generally, which are viable), which is better overall and/or how they interact with each other. I don't know what I would call these, if I did one (which I would like to at some point, though perhaps slightly differently for my own spin, though of course I hope he duplicates the first one,a s it was probably the best thing I have read on the site).

Finally, I have an idea which will focus on the kind of board analysis that we used to get with the old annotated game previews from the blog. I actually liked those more than the games themselves, the discussion of what is best to do. Tentatively, I am planning on calling this WWWWW - that's WanderingWinder Wonders What Wins - i.e., it's a board and we're looking for the best strategy out of many, which is not at all clear, at least to me. It is meant to be largely an interactive exercise, where we try to work out what the optimal strategy ont he board is together, probably with the use of simulators and especially the invocation of 'science', though I will probably include a game as a starting point at the least.

Anyway, this one's an annotated game, or rather part of one. Incidentally, I have decided just to leave the names in, mostly because with the return of CR, you can just go look the game up if you are so inclined, but also because people are having issues getting at the attachments.

This one was one with Mic Qsenoch, he of the consistent top-5, often top-1 of the leaderboard for a while now. Strategically, it's not that interesting: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20130106-103045-d72f7479.html
cards in supply: Bank, Border Village, Cartographer, Colony, Cutpurse, Fairgrounds, Grand Market, Haven, Inn, Platinum, Remake, and Secret Chamber
I get secret chamber early, he starts with silver (probably a little better), I get a cutpurse, which I quite like, but basically we are both using remake to trash way down, grab a little money and a lot of grand markets, with some havens and a very thinned out deck. We both accomplish this fairly equally.


Let's pick up the action after turn 12. Here's how the decks look:
Code: [Select]
Card WW Mic
GM 5 5
Haven 4 5
Duchy 0 1
Silver 4 5
Remake 2 1
Cutpurse 1 0
Estate 1 0


The Havens and Grand Markets are out, and there's one estate gone. However, with only 5 GMs each, that makes 6 buys, which means that piling out the estates isn't an option (and part of why it was safe for me to grab the estate on turn 12). Still, three pile endings are a big threat. But at the same time, nobody can actually commit to one in a single turn; it will take two. This means that we must jockey back and forth for the lead, to stop our opponents from getting a leg up on the three pile endings, but also be preparing to go in for a bit of a longer game.
This is what motivates my turn 13. I remake my extra 4-costs into a duchy, because I need lead now, and a cartographer, which will greatly help (along with the havens) in the fight against greening. I then buy with my $14 a platinum, for longevity, and a duchy. I know that he doesn't have enough money in his deck to buy out the last 5 duchies; the best he can do is four. And if he does this, then all I need to be able to do is get the last one with a province - 3 duchies and one province will cancel out  his 5 duchies, and I would win on the estate. So he can't really risk this happening, and will go for more points. Ergo the platinum and cartographer will really help me out in the long run - it all fits together, and this was all going through my mind as I chose what to do out of that last haven play.

He comes back with a strong hand on his own turn 13, building up $18 and buying a colony and border village into duchy. This is not a foolproof play - I can now win the game if I am able to get the last 4 duchies, either by producing nearly all of my money, or possible using a remake trick on the cartographer into border village gaining duchy to help me out. On the other hand, it would need a pretty good draw to do this, and at some point, he has to leave himself open. The thing I question, though, is what he saved with the haven. The border village is next to useless for him, as he only has one terminal. Actually, it might be worse, as it can mess haven up. On the other hand, in some cases it might bump fairgrounds. Probably this wont' come into play, but it might. Anyway, he could have saved $2 more. Unless he, and I would guess this actually is the case, set aside a silver on the last haven, having a hand full of them. In which case that's pretty bad luck (and at this point, it would have been a forced choice). In any case, if I were him, I would seriously have considered grabbing an estate with the duchy rather than the border village. It does clog his deck, but on the other hand, I can't pile out estates (if I use the 6 buys on this, I will be behind in points, unless I can also pull a remake trick for BV->duchy, in which case I am probably winning anyway), and he would give himself the possible opportunity to do so on the following turn, as well as evening out the point from my estate in a lot of cases.

My Turn 14 I have 17, which I need to spend on a colony, to re-equalize points, and then I get a border village into... inn. Well, cartographer was possible as well, but I knew inn would come to me pretty much right away, which was important, and basically I am using the inn similarly - I want a mini-warehouse (again, it might also help for fairgrounds at some point). It is important NOT for me to buy duchy - sure, he can win by piling out the last of the duchies, but if he gets that draw, I am lost anyway. So I decide to build, in the hopes of a bigger turn down the road.

His turn 14, and we can really start to feel the effects of the lack of draw on this board creaking in, as the green we have is starting to clog our moment-ago-very-trim decks. He is only able to muster 12, and he has little choice but to grab a colony.

Finally, on my turn 15, I am able to make good use out of the cartographer and the inn, draw up a bunch of money, $21 and 5 buys, which I could use to take a bunch of points, but notice is able to end it right away on duchies, which I do.

Could we say that first turn won it for me here? Absolutely. But it's not so much a lucky hand at the end - it was having the time to set it up earlier on. I exploited this, and that's definitely a firts turn thing too - he did not have such a good opportunity.


32
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/08/game-20130108-172416-0ef2d46f.html
Colony, Counting House, Duchess, Ghost Ship, Goons, Inn, Jester, Loan, Platinum, Vault, Walled Village, and Warehouse
Well, there it is - Colonies, Goons, Inns, and an extra village, and warehouse for good measure. It's pretty much Counting house's dream. Now, before you guys all go crazy, I'm sure this was played fairly badly. But in the heat of a game, it's very difficult - you try to adjust, you move around, and then there are three pile endings threatened and you really need the points, and then also with the attacks... well, games can drag on.
Turn 24, I get the dream counting house to pull all of my coppers, then trigger that reshuffle. And with a goons, it was a MASSIVE and very timely point infusion for me.
And again on the last turn... unfortunately I can't play my walled village without trigger a reshuffle, or I could get a goons in with the 17 coppers, but it's enough to buy the game-clinching duchy.

33
Game Reports / We don't need no STEEENKING tournaments!
« on: January 08, 2013, 02:41:26 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/07/game-20130107-201734-ee4e049d.html
Embargo, Fishing Village, King's Court, Market, Merchant Ship, Outpost, Pearl Diver, Tournament, Warehouse, and Wharf

So, I ignore tournament and it pays off big time. Well, sorta. In this game, my opponent, if he'd have taken diadem instead of a duchy, could have prize-fought me (incidentally, this would have been the third prize-fighter of the day for me, as TheSadPanda and I did it to each other in CONSECUTIVE GAMES that were very lopsided). But I am able to win anyway. What's the lesson here? Well, don't ignore such a big big big engine - wharf and FV he goes for a bit, but then he stops building, and actually only ever gets two king's courts. Meanwhile, I build and build and build and build. Well, with KC, Wharf, FV, Merchant ship for big coin, outpost, who isn't going engine here? I am able to come back on the strength of a LOT of duchies, though probably if he had built a little more, or maybe had a little better luck, or.... well, anyway, it's always fun to have a big comeback like this

34
Game Reports / In Which I open Secret Chamber
« on: January 05, 2013, 10:17:51 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/05/game-20130105-103826-25bcb178.html
Alchemist, Cache, Golem, Grand Market, Great Hall, Potion, Secret Chamber, Smithy, Stables, Upgrade, and Workshop

I do like the secret chamber here, because the game-plan is going to revolve around grand market just about any way you slice it, unless somehow smithy-BM actually wins here.

His deck winds up pretty good, too, though. I am not sure what I did wrong here - perhaps it was a little too early for great halls, perhaps I should go potion at some point, for the golems if not the alchemists (both would obviously be nice), and perhaps I ought to have gone for an upgrade. In any case, a large part of the closeness of the game probably comes down to turn 16, where I end up getting down to a hand of a secret chamber, an estate (one of three purely green cards in my deck) and four stables clumped together, with no treasure to get out of the rut. This could have easily lined up to be a big hand, but over-clumping of the stables makes it a rather poor one.

35
Game Reports / Chapel Lemonade or A Weak Board for Governor
« on: January 05, 2013, 06:04:57 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/03/game-20130103-152158-89e785b6.html

cards in supply: Chapel, Coppersmith, Governor, Hamlet, Native Village, Nobles, Quarry, Saboteur, Silk Road, and Talisman

The plan was to chapel down, get a quarry, maybe two, a hamlet or two, plow through the nobes as much as possible, and then figure out where I stood to get to provinces, But my chapel hits on: turn 4 with 3 coppers and a quarry; turn 6 with 3 coppers and a quarry; turn 8 with a silver, a quarry, an estate, and a hamlet that draws another quarry (I buy two nobles here). By this point, I decide, eh, I need something to discard to the hamlets anyway, and the estates are going to help silk roads later. So I kept them. Meanwhile, my opponent goes mass governor, but... the silvers really help my economy (well, basically they ARE my economy, as I'm getting lots of actions), and later on the draw->remodel just gives me lots of points, as I can go quarry->duchy and more important, silver-> estate. I end up with a deck that can't buy a province immediately and would LOVE crossroads, but anyway is clearly in a dominating position when he ends it - a few more green cards and he has next to no chance of getting enough (as he'd need almost EVERYTHING else), and in order to get the points he'd need, he would have to give me more benefits anyway.

36
Dominion Articles / The Engine
« on: January 05, 2013, 04:57:53 pm »
This is the fourth in my series of Articles on the five general Dominion Deck types; it covers Engines, which are highly powerful, plentiful, and popular, fitting between combo decks and Big Money decks.

What Defines an Engine?
The biggest thing that defines an engine is that it has massive cycling. This is generally in the form of card draw of some form - chancellor and scavenger do not engines make. This allows a deck to play its most important cards very often, and usually allows the deck to play large numbers of cards every turn. They are also typically fairly general and to some extent modular - you are looking more for types of cards than specific cards. In many instances, your engine won't work without ONE specific card; but if all or almost all of the important cards in your deck must be exactly as they are, you're probably looking at a combo more than an engine. Again, though, there's not a bright dividing line.

What Different Kinds of Engines are there?
Engines encompass a wide variety of decks. There are many ways of getting that engine-defining cycling, and there are many things to DO with it once you have it. Exactly how the deck works is going to vary from kingdom to kingdom, but there are some general categorizations which can be made.

The [Village] [Smithy] Engine
This is the most basic kind of engine you can build. The idea is that you play some card which gives multiple actions (throne rooms, King's Courts, and Golems can also count here) to be able to play big terminal draw cards in order to draw large portions of your deck. Once this comes together a bit, you can generally string several, village-smithy-village-smithy-village-smithy plays together. You can do almost anything as a payload for this kind of engine - what you want, exactly, will depend on the kingdom.

The Draw-to-X Engine
This is similar to a village/smithy type of engine, but instead of regular draw, it uses one of the draw-to-X cards - occasionally Jack of All Trades, but more often watchtower or Library, and most notably minion. Given the differences in how the draw works, this deck needs to behave a little bit differently than the village/smithy version talked about above - you would ideally want to play some of your payloads BEFORE your draw cards, but if your payloads and particularly draw cards are both terminals, you will need extra villages in order to make this happen. Disappearing villages (native and fishing, sometimes crossroads, university and festival) tend to be better here relative to the smithy versions, as the missed card draw isn't AS problematic here. Further, cards that give benefits for discarding (like Horse traders or warehouse) tend to shine a little extra in these decks, as you can draw past their downsides. Menagerie can sometimes work like the draw in these decks, bridging the gap between these and the next engine type. It's worth noting that these kinds of decks don't work nearly so well as the village/smithy variety when your payload has to be treasure (unless you have black market sitting around!).

Non-terminal Draw Engine
This engine depends on non-terminal drawing cards to go - things like Menagerie, Lab, Stables, Level 2-3 cities, Apothecary (and others). Non-terminal draw, to be balanced, tends to draw you less than terminal draw, but there are a couple advantages to this kind of deck compared with the previous engines: it can work even without villages, and if you do have some villages, you can have more payload cards without getting too much terminal collision. Sifters are also fairly decent here, if they are non-terminal, and even something like a large stack of cartographers can make this kind of engine work, possibly without ever getting a handsize over 5 cards. Hunting party famously often works differently than the rest of these, with HP/X decks. Apprentice can work here, but you either need some mega-turn mechanism to go off, or the ability to gain very expensive cards for fuel, or the engine isn't going to be running all that long.

Specialty Draw
There are basically two cards that work very well here: Crossroads and Scrying pool. They have amongst the highest drawing potential in the game (being unbounded in the amount they can draw you), and if you are going for this as the basis of your deck (certainly you can at least use crossroads without it being the focus), you need to prioritize the requisite cards more highly than normal. For instance, in a crossroads-based engine, if you play something like warehouse, you want to discard coppers, usually silvers, and even golds, in order to be able to draw more off of the crossroads.

Double Tactician
This is much more specialized than other kinds of engines, and along with the next kind of deck, lies between engine and combo. These work somewhat similarly to the draw-to-X engines actually - you need virtual money (or black market!), and then you need to play the second tactician at the end of the turn. Cards that need large handsizes to reach their full benefit can really shine here, as this can get set up to draw more cards faster than most other engines, though the upside is potentially smaller; in any case, this includes things like forge, and cellar.

The Mega-Turn Engine
Again, this plays, at least in terms of endings, almost closer to a combo deck than an engine. This is also more of a payload type than it is the actual driving force of the engine. Mega-turn engines seek to gain all of their points in one massive turn at the end of the game (or occasionally two or three). In these decks, you usually don't want to green at all until the very very end, unless you have to green sooner to stop your opponent from being able to end in the lead. Embargo is particularly potent in these kinds of decks, as you can shrug off the clogging effects of the curses - they'll never cycle through your deck.

What's Good For Engines?
In any engine you are going to need components to make it go, but that will vary from engine to engine. There are some general points though.
  • Trashing, particularly strong trashing, is very good. Thinner decks set up to engine up much faster than others. So chapel, remake, ambassador shine most in these, and things like upgrade and lookout are generally strongest in these kinds of decks as well, though they aren't *always* the best way to get the engine up and running.
  • Attacks to slow your opponents down or sometimes to hurt their point totals give you extra time to get set up and dominate the game, so discard attacks and i.e. saboteur find their best homes in these kinds of decks. Cursing attacks CAN be very good for these decks, too, IF (and usually ONLY if, though there's the rare exception a la scrying pool stack) you have the trashing (usually needs to be strong trashing) and draw in order to be able to clean them up - a non-engine opponent won't be able to do the same.
  • Alternate VP cards lengthen the game to give you time to get your engine up and running, provided that the engine is able to go for either the alt VP cards or provinces; certain alt VP cards can help our your opponent more than you in some cases, particularly if it's a slog you're up against. But most especially colonies, vineyards, and VP chips are big, big-time engine cards.
  • Gains. Most engines need some way of gaining more than one card in a turn in order to come out well. This helps to be able to get a critical mass of components, as well as extra payloads and very often multiple victory cards at once as well. For this, straight +buy is usually important as well.

On most boards, you will need a couple of these things, or more, along with some way of getting the cycling down, in order to come out on top. But there are also a large number where some of the more extreme of them (i.e. the best alternate VP, the very best strong trashing) along with the cycling will be good enough.

How do I play an Engine?
The biggest thing about playing the engine is to get the engine up and running first, before worrying about other things. You will need a little amount of money to get this going, usually, but not all that much. And then just focus very very hard on getting the cycling up to speed before worrying too much about other things. You often will want to pick up one attack early on to slow your opponent down, and at some point you may start to get hampered in your ability to buy more components because you can't generate enough buying power - this should be your cue to get more payload; usually, you want to prioritize a nice 5-cost (or even a 4 or a 3) engine piece over gold, unless you really need extra money. Eventually, you will have to turn for points, but you want to make sure that you are very well prepared to do so first. Generally it's a bad idea to pick up any provinces before you go virtually straight for green, green, and only green; if you green too early, your engine can gum up, and you will almost never have time to repair it afterwards. As for villages vs terminals, you generally want to get the a terminal before you get a village to support it, while you are building up, though at some point you will switch over to over-villaging in order to make sure your initial hand can get off the ground. This gets skewed a little more when the village is giving you something else useful, a la hamlet in a draw-to-X, Festival or Bazaar, or Worker's Village where you are desperate for more +buy.
Endgames usually depend a bit on the specific matchups, so...

Matchups
Vs Big Money
Against a big money deck, the money deck will usually be faster than you (or just bad, in which case this won't matter). Wait for quite a while before you go green, and when you do, be able to close the game out. Decently often, you will need to be able to get smaller VP in order to mount a comeback; keep this in mind, but also keep in mind that if you're building a decent engine, you WILL be able to do this. Don't get scared because you're behind and start reaching for provinces to close the gap - this is only sealing yourself in.

Vs Slog
The nice thing here is that the game will already be longer based on their deck choice, which gives you longer to get going than against a big money deck, and you sometimes need that. Against a slog, you need to be aware of what they're going for. You don't want to deny in most cases, at least early on, because you will gum up much worse than they will. Make sure you don't green until you can consistently buy out the big VP cards, take the lead and win. Alternatively, if they are playing slower, and building up to get an insurmountable VP matrix that you won't be able to overcome, then they will probably need to start greening later, in order to have enough economy to finish this out. In these cases, you can look to see if you can green early and actually go for some late blockage, after you have a decent amount of bigger VP. This can lock them out of their VP matrix, and in fact, there are some cases where you just win right there, since they won't be in a position to go after the expensive VP to come back, so it won't matter that you've gummed yourself up.
In any case, watch out for a three pile ending.

Vs the Rush
This is a difficult matchup for engines - you need to be able to get a lot of VP before they can end the game. The strongest engines can do this, of course, but they need to be very strong. Once you get the lead, ad stabilize it against them grabbing estates or hitting a new plateau on their scaling VP card, you've very often won, because they won't have a lot of other ways to gain points. But surviving long enough to have this happen can be a problem. And three pile endings can KILL you here.

Vs the Combo Deck
You would play this very similar to the Rush. Watch out for three pile endings. Here, you also want to look to try to make your own happen. Most of all, you want to either have the game ended, or be about to end it, by the time they establish their combo. Because if they get it up fast enough, you can well be dead.

Vs Engine (Mirror)
This plays differently than all the other matchups, and particularly different than the big money matchup. Usually, you need a lot of engine components, and they do too, so you end up going for many copies of the same thing... which does a couple things. First of all, winning splits becomes rather important in many cases - to figure out when, look for what makes your engine go, what it needs to survive. Generally, you will need multiples of at least draw cards and some form of extra actions (i.e. villages). If there's only one draw card or only one village, winning that split can be massive. This is probably most true on the village front - villages let you play your terminals; if you win even 6-4, you can play 7 terminals on a turn, and they can only get 4 - this is massive. +buy or gaining cards CAN also work this way, though this is somewhat more rare, as usually you don't need more than 4 buys in a turn that badly.
The other thing is that this makes three pile endings much more common. WATCH OUT FOR THEM. This in turn, makes having a lead more important, so that you can three pile end it on them, and so they can't do the same to you. In fact, you can use something like a duchy as a weapon against them - not only does it give you points, but it can actually stop them from picking up engine components, as you threaten to three pile end it if they do. One of the things you have to watch out for when winning splits is that you don't go too crazy - if you win a village split 8-2, you need to make sure they can't end it so fast that you won't get to enjoy the advantage, i.e. you need to be able to do something with it at some point. So here, you want to green earlier than you would in any other matchup where you are playing an engine. Only, you need to take care that you aren't greening too early, as they will be able to play the long game and grab LOTS of points to wipe you out. To figure out the timing right, keep watch of each of your decks to see how reliable they are, and more importantly, how much they can get in terms of money and buys. If there are gains to be had, remember that they can happen mid-turn and then those gained cards can be used mid-turn in a lot of cases - watch out for it. Always keep your eye out on potential. If they won't be able to three pile you, generally keep building, unless you reach the other stop criteria, which is that if you can just straight buy enough VP to end the game with a win, should you start buying green right now, then go ahead and green. I.e. if you can buy 5 provinces easily starting now, without gumming too much, and this won't gum you too much to be able to maintain the lead, then go for it.

37
Game Reports / Star Smugglers
« on: January 05, 2013, 11:10:52 am »
I would like to present a couple of recent games where the much-maligned smugglers played a key role.
The first is this:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20130104-120617-53af25f4.html
And I include the following link to the video of the game, both because I happen have one, and more because it shows the masquerade passes:


cards in supply: Bazaar, Coppersmith, Duchess, Masquerade, Pawn, Rabble, Sea Hag, Smugglers, Spy, and Warehouse
Okay, what's going on here? Sea hag, but there's a masquerade counter. More than this, the board screams engine - masquerade is good for BM, but really it's even better for engines. And bazaar and rabble are both excellent engine cards, and we have pawn for +buy. Now, given that this is likely to be the match-up, Smugglers is really good here. Why? Well, I should be able to play it most turns once the engine is going, and I can get 2 engine pieces at a time. Bazaar is going to be really important for me - I need all those actions. And though my engine is a little wonky and won't quite gel right, he ahs similar problems, and I more or less get things to go to plan.



The second game is this one:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/03/game-20130103-150452-bf844063.html
cards in supply: Contraband, Cutpurse, Haven, Market, Merchant Ship, Mining Village, Navigator, Outpost, Smugglers, and Steward
So what's going on HERE? Well, again I see an engine - market gives excellent +buy, mining village will help hold things together, and steward gives me draw in a deck that's mostly going to be cantrips. Haven helps smooth me out. Outpost gives extra engine turns. Again, we're going to get a mirror. So I like smugglers again. If we skip ahead to about turn 13, we both have our engines set up pretty well and are ready to green. We've both been using smugglers to pretty good effect, and our decks are pretty similar, so the game is pretty even. In my turn 13, I come to a realization about this interesting little interaction between outpost and smugglers. So first of all, on your own turn OR a smugglers turn, you can smuggle things off of your opponent, from the same turn of his. So this helps you get extra very good smuggling in off a single smugglers (we're a little strapped for actions). But the realization here is that outpost can defend against smugglers - they can only smuggle stuff off of your outpost turn, not your 'main' turn. The game probably turns in turn 14. Between his main turn and his outpost turn, he cashes out, trading in all of his mining villages to get three provinces and a big lead (5 provinces to 2). However, this really cripples his deck, as he's out of villages. Now, normally such a lead will be too big anyway, but here's where smugglers comes in. He has a VERY hard time getting to 8 now, and so I can wait and get LOTS of duchies. He can get a couple as well, but my smugglers multiply my gains in comparison to his, so by turn 16, I am able to come back, cash out my own mining villages, take the lead and end it. Perhaps he should get estates rather than duchies to limit my smugglers, but it's a very difficult call to make.
This game was also a great one for haven - it lines up villages and such, and most importantly it can put my smugglers into a place where I can really use them most effectively.

38
Game Reports / SWAG #5
« on: January 05, 2013, 12:20:00 am »
Here is the kingdom from a recent interesting game I played on iso. I haven't talked to my opponent about annotating it so (s)he (hereafter I'm using he, regardless) will remain anonymous, unless he feels like stepping forward.

cards in supply: Cutpurse, Feast, Grand Market, Harem, Horse Traders, Laboratory, Silk Road, Steward, Tactician, and Warehouse

Discuss strategy, the deck you want to build, how your opponent's strategy will come into how you play, if at all, what you think I did, etc. etc. in the comments below. I will post my annotations early next week.

39
Dominion Articles / The Combo Deck
« on: January 03, 2013, 11:20:23 pm »
This is my third in a series of articles on the five basic dominion deck types. This covers The Combo Deck, probably second-rarest of all, which rests between The Rush and Engine decks.

What Defines a Combo Deck?
A combo deck is a one that revolves entirely around a particular specific combo of 2+ different cards, generally getting 5-20 copies of the required cards in total. Once the combo is in place, if this has happened quickly enough, the deck should basically just win. This archetype does not deal with cards that work well together - i.e. it's not just decks that have combos in them, a la Horse Traders-Duke, which is a slog, or warehouse-treasure map, which works together well but isn't an entire deck, but rather deals with combos that are self-contained, the-entire-deck-and-gameplan-is-this strategies. Typically, these combos are fairly resistant to adding other cards in with them.
Usually, with more than two distinct cards, you are really talking about an engine, which is a bunch of good cards that work well together and draw a lot, but this is not a hard-and-fast rule. Even things like Hunting Party stacks and minion decks aren't combos - they're engines - that's just (strong) cards being used to cycle you through, which can sometimes be extremely powerful with few cards, but isn't a combo - there needs to also be some particular synergy, a sum-is-greater-than-the-parts, but particularly in such a way that goes beyond the normal functionality of a cards. For instance, something like Worker's Village and Rabble pair really nice together, as they give you actions, attack, buys, and draw - everything you need for an engine except money (well, maybe you would also like trashing and/or alt VP, but you generally don't need ALL that) - but this is clearly not a combo, it is an engine, and part of how you can tell is that the parts are really modular - you might lose a little bit of efficiency by switching to another kind of village or smithy variant, but generally those roles can be filled by a number of other cards. Something like Native Village/Bridge, on the other hand is very much a combo - it plays quite differently than other decks featuring these cards, and more important, you can't get the same kind of functionality out of any other cards - you can get bridge mega-turns in engines, to be sure, but nothing plays that same way.
Some examples of Combo Decks include (not an exhaustive list!):
  • The Native Village/Bridge deck
  • The Chancellor(or Scavenger)/Stash deck
  • The Golden Deck
  • The Counting House/Golem deck
  • The Apothecary/Native Village deck
  • Various forms of the Deck Deletion Pin deck
  • Some kind of KC/KC/Scheme/Scheme/Terminal Silver/Terminal Silver, though this probably isn't very good, even in the colony games it's designed for
  • Tactician/Vault

What's good for combos?
It really depends on the combo you're playing. Or... Combo pieces and/or ways of slowing opponents down to get your combo in place. But mostly combo pieces.

Interaction with Opponents
Don't. Well, have general tactical awareness, look for three pile ending possibilities. But largely, you're playing for your combo.

Matchups
Again, this is all dependent on what combo you're playing, but there are some general tips. Usually, there is some weakness of the combo. Usually this is an attack or type of attack - i.e. the golden deck is vulnerable to junkers and discards, chancellor(scavenger)/stash is very vulnerable to discard, scheme-based combos are vulnerable to minion, and if it's a large enough scheme chain, things like fortune teller. There are also other kinds of holes - for instance, combos which eventually attack the opponent into submission can be vulnerable to reactions - most forms of the Deck Deletion pin can be blocked by moat or horse traders. All deck deletion pins can get into a stalemate (or lose) if there is a massive lead for the opponent, in VP chips or on a mat somewhere, or there are drawing duration cards available. Native Village-based combos are extremely vulnerable to possession. So watch out for these things, know when they counter you, if they can be fast enough, etc. And know how to use them to counter combo decks if you are on the other side.

Combo decks are also in general vulnerable to not getting up and running in enough time. What 'enough time' is depends on the combo - a deck deletion pin is in time if it ever gets in before buying out the curses (or rarely, coppers; I suppose ruins as well now) can effectively be used to pile out the game with the win for its opponent, but others need enough expensive VP on the board, or at least 50% in many cases, to be available.
The biggest threat to making this happen is generally a strong, fast engine, as they can certainly outrace Combos, most normally if they have strong trashing to kick-start them. Rush decks also pose a serious threat in being able to finish things off too quickly for the combo to get in place.

Mirrors become strange things. Either it is a race to get the combo up first, which is a combination of 1st turn and luck, generally, with some skill on the order of the build, or very often it will end up in a 3-pile ending, where you want to build as long as you can so that you can cash out, but if you DO cash out too early, then this gives them a lot of time to build up for a bigger turn, and if you build too long, you run the risk of them three pile ending you. So the timing of when you pull the trigger, particularly if your combo is one that can go off as a matter of scale, is a huge skill in this kind of matchup. If the three pile ending is very likely, you need to watch out for defensive greening. Sometimes, a seemingly random duchy can be VERY good - it gives you the lead, will be good in the long run, and most importantly, it can stop your opponent from being able to buy more engine components, by utilizing the threat of that three pile ending.

40
Dominion Articles / The Rush
« on: January 03, 2013, 10:54:17 pm »
This is the second in my series of articles on general deck types in dominion. It covers the Rush deck, probably the least common kind of deck, which falls between The Slog and The Combo Deck.

What defines The Rush?
A Rush deck is conceptually very simple - get the game to end on three piles as fast as possible, while having some way to have the lead when this happens. A decent rush deck should be able to pile out the game in less time than flat big money could get to four provinces, generally around the time that a BM-Smithy mirror would be ending.

What's good for a Rush?
This is also pretty simple. You need some way of gaining things, and some way to do it fast. You also need some kind of VP to be able to get, because 8 extra estates is basically never going to cut it - you just CAN'T be THAT fast. Furthermore, you basically need your gainer to be able to gain those VP cards as part of the piling out strategy. Thus, your major contenders on the VP side are Gardens and Silk Roads (occasionally islands and rarely great halls or tunnels; I tend to doubt feodum's ability to work in a legitimate rush, because for it to even be two points you'd need 6 silvers, and that does not speed up three pile endings, so it seems more of a Slog card, but I haven't played with it more than twice, so I'm not really sure), and on the gainer side, you want most preferably ironworks, or failing that workshop (and, one assumes, armory would work here, but again, I haven't actually tried this). Occasionally, you can do something with develop, remake, or remodel to crank out a bunch of cheap piles, but this is pretty rare. Talisman is very good for ending the game fast enough, but getting the VP you need is a real issue - you really don't want to buy everything out one at a time, that's just far too slow for a rush.
Trashing is really interesting here. Unlike for the slog, where trashing, particularly strong trashing, is terrible, here it CAN be good. Very often it is superfluous and can slow you down. But in the right kingdom (particularly you will need some way to get multiple gainers played in a turn, so a village), trashing down INTO your rush can make it a bit faster, and a bit faster is just what you need. Chapel works here, but remake is the king, IF you have something to do on $3 other than silver, AND a village to take advantage of your higher action density.

Interactions with Opponents
Basically, you're trying to rush them out, almost no matter what they do. You need to keep an eye on the score. The big thing is that you want to make sure they can't block you out from enough of your key VP card - generally they can't contest you, as that only speeds game end, but you don't want to wait and buy gainers too long, because then they WILL be able to block you, and probably have some provinces to boot, and suddenly you can't rush the game to an end. The other big point is to watch them for hitting piles - you need to have a plan for ending three piles, but this plan can be flexible. An opponent who needs to hammer a cheap pile very hard is the best friend for a Rush deck, because that becomes a de facto third pile, and speeds up your ending. This is particularly true if the pile is a village, particularly fishing or especially crossroads, as the extra actions can let you double-play terminal gaining cards. Haven is another nice card, being cheap enough to buy out while also giving you the ability to make sure you get the precise one gainer played per turn that you typically want.
It's worth noting that rush decks are in the abstract the most resistant to attacks of almost all kinds. Curses? Thanks for ending another pile for me. Handsize? You probably had junk or collisions anyway, and it's not like you were going to buy something expensive. Trashing? This can be potentially annoying, but saboteur and swindler tend to speed up the game end, which is good for rush, and treasure-trashers you can generally brush off with impunity.

Matchups with other deck types
Against Big Money
Not the best matchup for rush, actually, because Big Money is one of the more likely decks to be able to get enough points from provinces quick enough to stop you from ending - and if you're too far gone, they can end it themselves. If you aren't going to be fast enough, you generally need to abort to a slog and try to win the long game. You can even play a bit of a hybrid here, and decide how much rush vs slog you want to go for in terms of how much big money they are going, and how much longevity they are going for. If they are going for a longer deck, play more Rush-y, but if they go more Big Money blitz, you play more Slog-y

Against Engines
This is a good matchup for the rush. The idea is to play your basic rush gameplan, but look for piles they are going after to help you to three pile. If they have a fast enough engine, they may be able to get enough points early enough to block you from the ending you want - in this case, look and see if they've over-greened, because in order to be that fast, they've probably had to buy more green faster than they would against most other deck types, and this may well leave them susceptible to clogging. If this is the case, you can go slightly more in a slog direction to win the longer game, but you generally still need to have three piles in sight at all time. The strongest engines will just be able to beat you though, if they aren't reliant on pile-driving a particular cheap pile.

Against the Slog
This is almost all about winning the split of the VP card you are going for, by enough that you can go ahead and end things instantly. Typically you're looking for 6-2 or better. But if you only get 5-3 or even 4-4, you generally have to try to go for the quick ending anyway. 4-4 and worse, you can just be in bad shape - but you're playing the rush, you ought to be able to win this split, and then with it, the game.

Against the Rush (mirror)
This is, again, about winning the split. This is so important here, you want to cut short your build-up of gaining gainers WAY earlier than you would in other matchups, and very early on head for the green. If you can win the split, that's usually game. If you tie the split though, there are two things that can happen. One is that you keep rushing down the other cards you need to end the game. But usually, because there's lots of cards left in that gainer pile, you don't actually want to do that, because there's going to be all this extra awkward time with your alt-VP and estates empty where you are struggling to come up with enough to grab that last pile. So often in the tied split, you want to abort your rush and go for a slog, trying to get enough other VP (generally duchies) to overcome, though you will still need to get 1-2 estates away from them usually. Trashing is bad here, because it'll lose you the split. And if there are MULTIPLE cheap alternate VPs, waiting for a slog isn't going to happen (and you will probably want to build up just slightly more than you would in in a normal mirror).

Against Combo
It depends on the combo, but generally it's about whether you can get the game ended before their combo is set up. Speed is of utmost importance, and that means speed to get ALL piles out, not just your key card.

41
Dominion Articles / The Slog
« on: December 31, 2012, 05:11:24 pm »
Everyone always talks about there being two kinds of decks - Big Money and Engine. But I think there are really 5 general kinds of deck, and I want to talk about the 3rd most prevalent in this article - the Slog - which falls in place between Big Money and The Rush.

What characterizes the Slog?
There is no clear dividing line to break slogs off from other deck types, just as there isn't always a bright line between Big Money decks and Engine decks. But some rules of thumb are that you cycle very slowly, copper is near- or above-average money density for most of the game, or you generally expect, if the game is well played, to get more points from duchies than from provinces. Slogs tend not to be many people's ideas of fun (so it's probably good that they aren't good nearly so often as engines or big money), as you spend many turns doing not a whole lot but playing 3 to 4ish cards a turn (including treasure!) and buying one thing. Now, this may sound a lot like big money to you, but for what I'd really call a slog, it's more like small money - in a big money deck, your average hand cash generally goes up past $6; in a slog, it wouldn't.

Why play a Slog?
Most usually, your opponent sort of forces you into it. The number one reason to play a slog is because your opponent is playing junking attacks on you - cursers, particularly Ill Gotten Gains, sea hag, and mountebank, or ambassador (looters MAY have a similar effect, but I haven't played enough Dark Ages to be sure). Noble Brigand can work similarly by giving you copper and disincentivizing you from buying more expensive treasures. Now, these don't necessarily doom you to a slog, particularly if there's trashing (an ambassador *war* isn't a slog... until you lose or give up), a super-strong engine, or some way of dealing with the curses. Or just enough money sitting around with something productive to do (a la jack, trader, watchtower).

The reason you'll voluntarily go for a slog, usually, is certain alternate VP cards - namely, gardens, duke, and silk road. For each of these, if you can just load up on lots of stuff, even junk, with lots of things like copper, and just wait and drag the game on, you can actually have really good chances to rack up lots of points. Now, it's important not to get this confused with a rush, like a workshop/gardens rush, which is more about getting three piles gone quickly. Slogs want the game to last many turns, in order to reap their long, large, slow benefits.
Fairgrounds can sort of reach into this category, but usually for fairgrounds, you start out as at least a money deck, and you generally want at least one province, and 6 for a long time, which is usually a bit more than 'pure' slogs can really muster.
Philosopher's stone, of course, also pushes you to a slog more or less all the time, but it is just not that good very often; with the right deck, though (say, against mountebank in some situations, after familiars trade curses, or of course with herbalist), it can really shine and say 'slog it up'!

What's good for Slogs?

well, aside from the alternate victory cards and P-Stone mentioned above, the biggest things are cards that let you discard for benefit (like vault, horse traders, cellar), because you usually have some lousy cards to pitch, and sifters (a la cartographer and warehouse) for largely the same reason. VP Chip cards are good, too, but they almost always help engines more if ever there's a choice for one, and they can often help big money more as well. Cards giving +buy or gain almost anything also tend to be useful, as free coppers are nice, and if you can do better, that's even better. Thus, silver-gainers are really great for this kind of deck - if copper tends to be good, then we can imagine what silver can do for you.
General interaction with opponents
Opponents' hand-size attacks don't hurt as much as with say a big money deck, because you usually have very pitch-able cards. And one might guess that penalties from opponents' cards will often help, too - opponents' vaults are brilliant for you, as are the free silvers from embassy. Though since slogs don't like trashing almost at all, opponents' bishops are extra-powered. Cursing and junking attacks obviously still hurt (well, not if the junk is a copper), but this is greatly mitigated in comparison with basically every other deck type - which is why they lead you to slogs in the first place. What really hurts a slog player, though, and this is in contrast to most every other deck type, is trashing attacks. Swindler, saboteur, pirate ship, thief, all very poor cards in general, really crush you by eating your economy, leaving you with a deck too swamped to do ANYTHING.


Match-ups with other deck types

Against Big Money
Against big money, slogs can really shine. This is the best match-up, in the general case, for a slog deck. You largely make them try to buy out all the provinces, or enough to overcome whatever you can put together off of the cheaper green, and they often just don't have the longevity to do it. If they try to build up for a long time in order to have that longevity, the Slog player should either look to build up an insurmountable lead (i.e. via having a matrix of duchies with gardens, silk roads, or dukes; sometimes just gardens; it should be noted that colonies make this strategy quite bad) or to get a lead and then end on three piles (you see this more in cursing games, where you can pile out duchy+curse and some other convenient card before they get enough provinces). If going for the VP matrix route, you should make sure to build up your economy enough to be able to complete the matrix before stalling out, though you have to balance this out against your opponent's ability to block some of your key card and deny you.

Against Engines

Engine is a very difficult match-up for the Slog, assuming that the engine is very viable at all. If the engine is very slow to come together, then the Slog player can hope to win by accumulating a VP matrix, though he usually has less time to do this than he would against a Big Money opponent (BM may beat engines to 4 provinces, but very rarely will engine not be able to get all 8 of them faster). But the main weapon against engine players is the three pile ending - you can cut out their ability to build the engine as large as they want, in some cases, by threatening to be able to do this if they make piles too low, and this can help you GREATLY. If they DO continue to build to far, of course, you need to be able to look at that and be willing to potentially pass up more victory cards in order to try to secure the piling out before they can catch up to you.

Against Slogs (mirror)
In the Mirror, you want to get to your key cards pretty fast - for Dukes, this is duchy, for silk road or gardens, it is those cards - much faster than you would in other match-ups. Whereas you need to build up a bit against a big money deck, here it's almost all about winning that key split, which means you want to start in pretty soon. You want to wait as long as you can before starting, so that you have the longevity to continue fighting for 5-cost VP cards after the main fight is over, but NOT at the expense of the split itself, in most every situation, as those extra points usually don't make up for a 2-card swing of your key card (or worse!). If you win the split, look to get to the three-pile ending as efficiently as possible - most often this is by pushing for it yourself, so that your opponent doesn't have time to rebuild and go after provinces or something, but sometimes this means to play it slow yourself, so that your superiority in the key card (which likely cues off having more cards in your deck, either total or of a specific type) can come through. If you lose the split, you need to judge whether you can possibly re-build and get enough expensive VP cards before the game ends to overcome your deficit, or more often to try to rush smaller green cards as fast as you can, to try to three pile ending where some luck might save you.

Against the Rush
This is another tough match-up. If it's a poor rush, you can just grab enough VP early enough for them not to be able to end the game, and then you've basically won. Alternatively, if they are going for the same alt-VP card as you, if you can manage to hold your own on the split, you're often able to outlast them on secondary VP cards (i.e. against a player who is going for a gardens rush, if you can hold off the split well enough, you can hope to come out ahead by being able to get more duchies). Generally, though, a viable rush is going to own a slog pretty badly.

Against Combo
As is basically always the case, it depends on the combo. But generally this match-up is similar to the matchup with engine, only it tends to be worse, since a combo is more likely to be able to power straight through, is generally less prone to stalling, can build up more, and usually doesn't have to worry as much about three pile endings.

42
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20121230-113801-19ad630c.html
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20121230-114402-6b65b177.html
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20121230-115019-65422c7e.html

Played these three games against MrEevee (later on he took 5 in a row off me - ick), after I was unsatisfied by the first (They're all the same kingdom).

Here's the set: cards in supply: Embassy, Feast, Fool's Gold, Fortune Teller, King's Court, Saboteur, Trading Post, Tribute, Vault, and Wharf



Basically, here's what went down. He is Wharf/FG, pretty basically. Well, it's a basic strategy, but it is one of the very very best 2 card combos. And I am Wharf+KC+Saboteur, with Feast and maybe fortune teller and maaaaaaybe embassy. The idea is to mass up on Wharves and KCs to draw everything pronto, then get saboteurs to knock out his deck, which is especially potent because his economy is built up in 2-cost cards. Fortune teller gives King-able money and can nail down provinces for me. Feast *should* get me a slightly faster accumulation of the precious wharves I need, and later on I can king it to gain triple things. Embassy can potentially help me draw, most importantly to pinpoint colliding KCs with the other actions I need, though giving him silver is double-edged - it slows down his FG train, but protects him from saboteur. And of course, Wharf is generally better anyway.

So the first game goes dreadfully - I open silver/feast, and I don't get a single $5 on the first reshuffle, and then I'm unable to connect a KC with a wharf until turn 20.

The other two are much closer, but I still feel that the engine SHOULD turn out good here.

There are a number of important questions, though. Is the feast start good? Should the engine player get FGs to deny the opponent? If so, when and how many? Should he prefer them to silver from the start? Should the engine player get Fortune Teller? When? When should he get late-game feasts? When do the Saboteur buys come in? When should FG be given up for gold? Is there a way for Money player to put pressure on for a three-pile ending, say with estates (and FG and Wharf)? Or Duchies?
And on and on and on.

What say you?

43
Game Reports / SWAG #4
« on: December 30, 2012, 06:41:47 pm »
A recent game against shark_bait that he most graciously agreed that I could annotate, as we had a nice conversation about it at the start of the next game. Thoughts comments and annotations coming at the end of the week.
Without further ado, here's the set:

cards in supply: City, Colony, Expand, Explorer, Goons, Governor, Loan, Margrave, Moat, Platinum, Potion, Remake, and Transmute

44
Game Reports / Masquerade Counters Ambassador.... HARD
« on: December 23, 2012, 12:13:23 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/22/game-20121222-080240-02d74834.html

See, ambassador is all about getting your deck size down while keeping your opponents' up, which is pretty much only worth the time investment if you are going to build an engine. Masquerade works sorta similarly, but less efficiently - but it IS some of that card draw engine in the process. Plus, against an opponent with a thinner deck than you, the passing can work almost like an attack.

The key was that, although masq and money wants only one masquerade, lots of engines like two, and against ambassador, you want a lot. But then you can just breeze through.

45
Game Reports / SWAG #3
« on: December 22, 2012, 08:58:21 am »
Yeah, I took RisingJaguar's suggestion and am calling this Super WanderingWinder Annotated game #3. This one was against Stef, we had a nice discussion about it, and he kindly agreed to let me annotate, with no qualms.

The Set: Apothecary, Develop, Gardens, Horse Traders, Lighthouse, Militia, Scout, Smugglers, Stash, Thief, Wishing Well, and Worker's Village.

It was veto mode - I went first and vetoed smugglers; he vetoed stash.

Comment on and analyze the set now, and I will try to post my analysis say on the 26th of December. Also, will post a video at that time. I also stupidly forgot to grab the log, but thank goodness for CouncilRoom being back!

46
Game Reports / Three with TheSadPanda
« on: December 22, 2012, 12:25:27 am »
I've played TheSadPanda a LOT in the past few days - there have been long stretches where I was the only one auto-match set against him, and he was either the only one or one of two for me, so some epic wars. There are three really interesting games that I seriously considered doing annotated games on, but which I ultimately think are going to be best fit as regular old game reports. So, I figure, same opponent, why not same thread?

Game 1 (Note, these were not consecutive, and this probably isn't even the right order on them; also, they're cherry-picked by me, so take that for what you will): http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/21/game-20121221-163403-d5463d18.html
So University-vineyards is super obvious here, but what else to do? We both open masquerade with our potions, which makes a lot of sense to accelerate and thin. But I have what I think is a very clever idea which I think largely wins me the game. And that's to focus crossroads. I realize I hardly need any money, so I just pass away my coppers in preference to estates, virtually every time (there was one or two that I wanted to make sure I had $2 left). This allows my crossroads to cycle my through at a good rate. Eventually, when I am drawing big parts of my deck, I grab some oases to let me hit the $5 I need to to reach Horn of Plenty. But generally, I am discarding coppers to them rather than estates, to let my crossroads draw more.
A few more notes. HoP is big - I think it was at least $8 every time I played it - but what do you get with it? Well, I definitely wanted more, villages but mostly actions help the eventual vineyards, so BV->extra HoP makes a lot of sense. Eventually though, we get to a little bit of a dance where there is a trade-off between piling out and getting points. In these situations, in mirrors like this, you generally want to take points a little sooner than the expert engine player realizes. Reason is that the lead can actually act as a defense against the continued building up of an engine by the opponent, as you can pile out with a win (something that a BM opponent generally doesn't have the luxury of). So eventually I start grabbing provinces to cement my lead, and always always look out for ways to pile out with a win, as I eventually do.
Golem is something I'm not sure about here. I think it was good for him; for me, the thought was to play university more, but I am not so sure it was the right call. Probably should have headed for vineyards sooner, both of us. It's weird - usually you eventually pick up a second, maybe third potion, to really hammer down the vineyards, but here, we are drawing too much of our deck to make use, with absolutely no +buy on the board.

Game 2: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/21/game-20121221-161408-f3fdc35f.html
Full disclaimer, I got really lucky here on the start. And player position. So IGG and embargo. Embargo is a SUPER high skill card. So the interesting thing is what to embargo. If he had gone for potion, I probably try to go block scrying pool. If he goes for something conventional looking, I will block IGG while I have a lead in them, then head into a duchy/duke slog. And if he defends against that (as he does) by going for gainers, I definitely DON'T want to embargo IGG, since he can still get into them, and I build the boring old IGG rush deck, embargoing something nobody will buy, so that his gainers getting around it is absolutely unimportant, and my money lead rules the day. Basically, there wasn't much he could do here, but I had to have all this worked out, and he did well to go after the trickiest of these.

Game 3: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/21/game-20121221-152507-bdf27d76.html
I figure it fair to post a loss - I've definitely had my fair share! This game makes me think I have spent way too much time watching Stef and Marin. I see monument with something vaguely enginey and immediately try to figure out how to play it a million times. And I do! But there's a way you can do this while also buying provinces, which is more or less what TheSadPanda does. I lay off HARD on provinces, though part of me thinks that the big forge into the one province actually might have been what did me in here. I was always really close, but not quite getting there. I almost certainly should have done something more with inn and tunnel, and bought some more provinces earlier. I do like the preferential trashing of copper over estate early on with upgrade, to help cycling, particularly (well, basically entirely) because of crossroads. Well anyway, he played well here and I got too cute, a deserved win from him.

47
...and I win rather handily. Without colonies. http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/19/game-20121219-182820-8aa5ba1e.html

I probably got really lucky draws, wishing welled poorly, yeah yeah yeah. But it was a load of fun to play. And I was not at all unhappy getting tortured most times - farmland curse->estate gives me 4 points (okay, 3 above what I'd have without getting cursed), 2 green cards for my silk road, and works with the barons. Also, at the end of the game, he suicides to lose by only 6, but on the other hand, my next duchy was going to be worth 11 points.

48
Dominion Articles / Cartographer
« on: December 18, 2012, 05:23:54 pm »
Cartographer is one of hose cards that has taken me a long time to try to wrap my head around. And while I don't think I'm a perfect expert, I do think I finally have a pretty decent grip on the card.


General - What are the plusses?
The first thing is, it's a cantrip. So it can't hurt you (except for terminal draw, triggering reshuffles (which cartographer will do more often than most things), getting hit by discard attacks, etc. etc.). But beyond this, what are the plusses?

A Comparison
I think it's useful to compare it to that old standard, Laboratory. Lab, on top of the cantrip, draws another card. Cartographer, instead, lets you look at the top four, discard any, and reorder the rest. Well, the big thing here is the discarding. If you discard nothing, lab was almost surely better for you. If you discard one, again, lab could have drawn one, you would have preferred it. But if you start discarding two or three (or four, though this is pretty rare), cartographer starts coming away as better quite a lot.


Tactics
This takes us to the bulk of the article - Cartographer is not SO much a card about strategic understanding (don't get me wrong, that is there too), but rather mostly a card that you need to understand tactically, which is what a large part of this article will focus on.

Discarding
So what do you discard? The obvious answer is bad cards. (Okay, maybe the obvious answer is tunnels). But what constitutes a bad card? Basically, how bad a card is depends on the relationship it has to the other cards in your deck; the worse it is in relationship to them, the more you want to discard it. Conversely (and more importantly, generally), the BETTER other cards are, the more you want to cycle through what it is you are looking at.

An Interlude to Strategy
The strategic poster-child for this kind of nuance is mountebank. In a mountebank war, you are trying to play that as many times as possible, particularly early on, so you will skip past everything and it's brother to get to it. And after the cursing is done, cartographer is really good to get past all those worthless curses and worth-not-so-much coppers. So in a mountebank game, you definitely want Cartographer over Lab (though, unsurprisingly, you generally want Hunting Party over either one...).
Basically though, strategically what you want for your deck is inhomogeneity AKA large variance AKA you want a big difference in quality between your cards. If your cards are pretty similar in value, Cartographer does you very little good (and lab is pretty darn excellent). But if they're very different, it can be stellar.


Reordering
The other big part of how you play Cartographer has to do with the reordering. Now, lots of times, it just doesn't matter. But there are lots of times when it does. This is particularly the case when you have other cantrips. The big thing here is to figure out what you need this turn, and what it is you need later. So with a hand of Gold-Silver-Copper-Cartographer-Province, you play that cartog, draw a great hall, and see Estate, Estate, Gold, Silver. You should obviously pitch the estates, and then move your silver on top of your gold - you only need $8 right now, that 9th coin won't help at all. But the difference between gold and silver might be  of crucial importance.

Subtleties
Okay, but that is a bit of an obvious example. There are many things which are more subtle. For instance, if you have a Village in hand, along with a silver and 3 copper, and cartographer revealed gold-village-village-curse, you should probably ditch the curse, and put the gold on top. Lots of times I will see people put the extra cards first, because they'll get a 'better turn' this turn (particularly true if, say, one of the villages were a peddler...) The only other way that you MIGHT want to play it is to dump both the gold and the curse, and use your cantrips to draw through to the next card; you really only want to go for that if you're playing for a big engine and/or you KNOW that the card after is a draw card (say because you're an expert deck tracker and it's the last thing in your deck).

Expounding on this, there are going to be times where you actually want to keep one of the bad cards (this is not really a good use of cartographer, but it can happen). Consider an example where you have peddler-gold-gold-gold-cartographer, cartographer draws a copper, and then you see estate-platinum-gold-gold. You should just let stuff sit here. You need to use peddler, but you don't want to draw a good card, so let yourself draw the estate, buy that colony.
Now, an example like that is weird, because you shouldn't be playing that kind of deck with cartographer really. But similar examples will come up all the time, and you need to be able to say, okay, I am going to hang on to those bad cards. Much like paying 8 for an herbalist, it grinds against our internal instincts, but sometimes you need to do it.
The other thing you have to be worried about is triggering reshuffles - this can make you keep cards that you would otherwise pitch, or occasionally pitch borderline cards you'd otherwise keep.


Order of play
And here is the other big tactical point of playing cartographer. Like most filter-the-next-stuff cards (e.g. apothecary, pearl diver, lookout, scout, and, when you have spare actions, duchess and navigator), you want to play this before other cantrips, so you can work out exactly when you draw different things. Generally. But, if you already KNOW what is on your deck, and you want to keep it, then you want to play at least most of your other cantrips first, up to the point where the draw of the cartographer picks up the last known card of the deck. Sometimes - in fact, I'd say usually - you also want to hold back one cantrip in order to be able to draw something that you might dredge up in the next four cards.


Card Interactions

Note: I am not talking about Dark Ages cards here, having played very little with them.

Combos
Wishing Well
Cartographer turns Wishing Well into Lab, if you keep more than one card (you usually want to) to make a very nice non-terminal draw engine. By itself, this is decently strong but nothing to really write home about. Add in a strong non-draw terminal or two and you have a potent deck.

Tunnel.
It discards tunnels (and coppers and estates and maybe silvers at some point) and gets you to those golds faster. This is not very strong, though, without some more enablers. This could easily therefore also go down as a nombo.

Platinum

Yes. Okay, not really a combo, but it works pretty nice for colony games.

Cantrips in general
These are basically what let you use the ordering ability of cartographer.

Cursers
Cartographer wins you the war, then cycles past the curses in your deck. Win.


Nombos
(i.e. you think these work well, but in practice, it doesn't work out so hot).
Stash
Hey, it cycles you really really fast. Good luck getting so many 5s very fast though.

Apothecary
You'd think more filtering is better, but these generally just end up stepping on each others toes.

Scout
I'd say this is the same thing as apothecary, except moreso, but then nobody thinks scout is good 'better' than just about anything....


Anti-Combos
(i.e. these cards actively dislike each other)
Trader
You really don't want a silver flood here - you want variation in cards.

Terminal Draw
Like any other cantrip

Strong Trashing
Well, cartographer can skip worthless trashers later on, but if your deck is already all good cards, you don't need its effect so much (and there's probably something better)

Jack of All Trades
See the note on Trader. Also Jack already sifts for you, and is very mild terminal draw.

49
Dominion Isotropic / So who's this FEEDMEMORE guy?
« on: December 18, 2012, 07:54:41 am »
And how is he doing it? Anyone played him?

50
Game Reports / WWAG #2
« on: December 10, 2012, 11:00:01 pm »
Yeah, that stands for WanderingWinder Annotated Game. Is this at all catchy, or am I just a total dork? (Don't worry, I know I'm a total dork. I'm okay with that).

Anyway, here's a very interesting set form an interesting recent game that I played. I am gonna full annotate this one, anonymously unless my opponent requests otherwise (though he may not even remember it was him at this point). Hopefully you guys will like the new format I will try on the annotations, but we'll see. I can always change it up for late ones. Also, SPOILER ALERT: I lose this game, ending up with half of the points of my opponent.

Anyway, here's the set:
cards in supply: Bank, City, Gardens, Grand Market, Jack of All Trades, Jester, Masquerade, Potion, Scrying Pool, Torturer, and Vineyard

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