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76

Dominion Articles / Re: Deck Control

« on: June 14, 2011, 07:15:44 pm »

Minion is the most obvious card this is really important with.  If you play all your minions and keep reshuffling, you will have nothing left but crap to draw on your next hand.  Also, if you've played the 1 or 2 most important cards in your deck this turn, you may want to lay off that last great hall or pearl diver, maybe even a lab if it's going to trigger a reshuffle, because the extra card or two now may not be worth not reshuffling all you've played this turn. 

Chaining vaults is also another really important thing to keep exact track of what you can draw, as if you keep dropping your estates, provinces, etc, you don't want to shuffle them up and not draw them all, or they will be in your next hand for sure.

77

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is the point counter cheating?

« on: June 14, 2011, 07:09:02 pm »

If you're using one and your opponent clearly doesn't want you to use it, it's basically cheating.  If both players are happy to use it, it's fine.

78

Dominion General Discussion / Re: First player advantage

« on: June 14, 2011, 01:07:53 am »

The rule for ties does not come close to negating the first player advantage.  If you win because you got one more turn than your opponent, then you had an advantage.  Why would the first player end the game on a tie as they would lose the tiebreak? As Theory said, the advantage could get negated by random factors very early in the game, or it could just be magnified to make the 2nd player have no chance, which makes it very hard to quantify.

I prefer the equal turns variant when face to face, I think it's closer to being fair, especially if the game is ending on piles.  Some of my friends even add 'phantom provinces' so they are equal during the extra turns, but I'm less sure about this.

79

Other Games / Re: What other games do you enjoy playing?

« on: June 14, 2011, 12:43:37 am »

Playing games is pretty much what I do, and I play a lot of them (card, board and video), but bridge is the main one, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes challenging games and understands the basic concepts of trick-taking card games, because it's the best game out there and you can never truly master it.

80

Game Reports / Re: High Score

« on: June 14, 2011, 12:31:07 am »

Goons does some sick things.  My high score was 450, ~400 of it coming on the last turn:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110106-004348-7e127486.html
I only had 7 goons, and there were still a bunch of coppers left, and the curses were given out, not bought, so I'm sure the absolute max could go well over 1000.  Having gardens and vineyard stacks to also buy out in the end would probably increase the total a lot too.

This one doesn't compare max score wise because we ran out of junk, but thought it was interesting, as it was competitive, where the game ended because there weren't any 0 cost things for us to buy anymore, coppers going before the curses, this just showing there really is a limit to the eternal goons/watchtower deck - you will run out of stuff to buy eventually:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110303-191442-1d42f407.html
If there were infinite coppers, the game may have gone on for a while with truly ridiculous scores.

81

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Tournament + Black Market

« on: June 13, 2011, 11:56:25 pm »

Well, it involves a curse giver/hand size reducer combined as well as other useful things, so it is more after a few plays, but if the board is such that there is no cursing or trashing (trashing at least will be available from the BM, but it will quite possibly be too slow) those cards can be game breaking too, which is why many people don't like the card in the first place.  One of the games, getting a quarry from the BM then a princess from the tournament from the BM just made my opp basically go 'oh god' and resign as I bought out a city stack while emptying the curses on him.  Sure, a curser from the BM deck (or a trasher) can be game breaking, but access to the entire prize pile for one person is a lot worse.

82

Dominion General Discussion / Tournament + Black Market

« on: June 13, 2011, 08:27:36 pm »

Tournament really should not show up in the black market deck.  I've seen it twice (fortunately gotten myself it both times) and it was incredibly destructive.  Both were in colony games with useful actions; I just bought a province then started racking up all the prizes to have complete control of the game.  I understand black market is random, but this is puts the prizes in play for only one player and is far too much.

83

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Duke Analysis?

« on: June 13, 2011, 07:50:12 pm »

Duke works well when you have extra ways of getting at least duchies, if not also dukes - examples: transmute, ironworks + bridge, horn of plenty, etc.  Also when you have a lot of bridges, you can get really cheap and plentiful dukes and duchies.

It usually isn't something you focus on from the start, but switch to if your deck allows for it and you fall behind.  You can also go for them if you are cycling a big deck with lots of buys, but if the game isn't almost over, they bog you down more than provinces.   I've seen them beat colonies only once, it is not a common occurrence, although your opponent is more apt to let you get all of the duchies if colonies are in play.