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Dominion General Discussion / Re: 4 game reports, a rant and some basic strategy
« on: June 25, 2013, 01:45:46 pm »
If either of you have cards, I'll play.
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77
Dominion General Discussion / Re: 4 game reports, a rant and some basic strategy
« on: June 25, 2013, 01:35:11 pm »when I'm up 40-7 he resigns
That doesn't seem like a ragequit, more like a polite resignation. In many games, resigning when you know you're dead and not forcing the game to play out to the end is considered polite, depending on how long the rest of the game is expected to last. Not that you have to resign, I never resign, always hoping my opponent will have a rapid-onset case of stupid, but it's standard practice in chess, for example.
Yeah, that's the kind of resign I thought of it as.
I've had people with 5000+ ratings open potion for only possession *multiple times* (and actually got it once on the first shuffle thanks to a soothsayer play and oodles of luck, but anyway I won without much trouble); randomly buy duchy as the first green card of a pretty normal-looking game, then follow it up by buying duchy or estate at virtually every opportunity, allowing me to piledrive provinces; uh, yeah some other stuff which is bad but not crazy. I have some of these on video, too, but man I'm not mostly releasing those (the one where I beat a first shuffle possession, ok, I think this makes a point on how possession isn't the end of the world) because it's both boring and a form of public shaming there's no need to subject them to. Not that I am trying to say that you are in any way in the wrong for posting this.
Yeah, this isn't intended as a public shaming, but if Crablar sees this and wants it taken down, I'll replace the first post with "Fluffy Monkeys." The intention of this is to just express my frustration with the things I see at the level I play at. I am in no way even saying that Crablar is a bad player. It's totally possible that he got the rating he has because he is indeed a good player and just had an unlucky/experimental day yesterday. And maybe every time I see something like this, it is just people in experimental moods. I know I've basically thrown games by thinking "I can beat Ambassador/Sea Hag/Possession." Maybe I shouldn't rage at this, but I feel that it's come up enough that I'm not just getting experimental days. And hey, I don't own any cards, so maybe I shouldn't be complaining.
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But yes, your point about 'people can get rated this high doing that?' is, I think, a good one. Makes me wonder how they get there, because usually the players around there aren't (IMO) great, but well, at least quite competent.
Yes, this is the main point I was trying to make. Being a 5000-5500 player myself (depending on the day and the opponents I find) I feel that this rating level should see players of a caliber similar to myself. Maybe I'm underrated, but I'm not sure that's the case.
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I also find myself ignoring Sea Hag increasingly more often nowadays, but of course it's something you have to have a number of reasons to avoid, and not something you need reasons to get.
Yeah, Sea Hag is in the class of cards which I need a reason to avoid, rather than the class which I need a reason to get. But I find it hard to completely ignore Cursers like that.
78
Dominion General Discussion / Re: 4 game reports, a rant and some basic strategy
« on: June 25, 2013, 01:21:49 pm »Don't base Treasure Map on a one-time trash. It's just not a good idea.
I assume you mean, "Don't base Market Square on a one-time trash."
Yes.
And here was me thinking that everyone above 5000 knew that Sea Hag just isn't that good against Rebuild.
To be fair, it is a Shelter game, so Rebuild isn't an automatic buy.
Yeah, I considered going for Rebuild, but with Shelters I decided against. If I were planning to go for Rebuild, I would have probably opened Silver/Silver, but as it is, I like Sea Hag/Silver. Also, the thing with any Sifting/Trashing vs. Curses argument is that if you're Sifting/Trashing Curses, you aren't Sifting/Trashing other cards. Even with Rebuild, you're sifting over Curses, but you still need to draw your Rebuilds. I think that along with Shelters, Rebuild is avoidable on this board because of Lookout and Sea Hag. If the Rebuild player never gets a Sea Hag, then his one Lookout can only keep his deck size in place against Sea Hag, while the Sea Hag player can use a Lookout to speed up his deck. (Without Rebuild, the SH player would end up playing SH more often as his deck got smaller and the Rebuilder's Lookout would come up less as his deck got bigger, but with Rebuild this effect isn't that noticeable because of all the cycling.)
79
Dominion General Discussion / 4 game reports, a rant and some basic strategy
« on: June 25, 2013, 12:02:30 pm »
Yesterday, I played this game against Crablar. My main idea was to Forge basically everything, reveal Market Squares while I was at it, and then transition into stuff with Tournament. Meanwhile, Crablar opens Treasure Map/Market Square with the idea of activating Market Squares off of TM matches. I win 31-20 and he comments that his strategy was probably a bad idea, and asks for a rematch. He has a pro rating of about 5300, so I accept.
This leads to this gem. I open with Sea Hag which he ignores all game and when I'm up 40-7 he resigns and asks to make it a best of 5 series. I have the time, so I accept.
Game 3 is an engine based on Border Village, Hunting Grounds, Bridge, and Golem with Treasury and Baker for support. We both go for it and despite his Potion opening, he causes a three-pile ending to win.
Finally, we play this game which again features Sea Hag. He ignores it, and opens Potion, getting 2 Transmutes but never a Possession while I keep giving him Curses. Thanks to trashing, he's able to end with only 2, but my Courtyard-BM approach with a Sea Hag and Lookout beats his interesting engine/Rebuild mix.
Now, where am I going with this? Well, two places. First, this is evidence to me that Goko's rating system sucks. I can't believe that a player can pass 5000 and still ignore Sea Hag, go for Treasure Map/Market Square, and open Potion on a Golem board, or a Transmute/Possession board. And this is not the first time I've seen this kind of play at what I thought was a high level. I won't say that I played any of those games perfectly; I accidentally trashed too much on a Forge play in the first one, and missed some opportunities for Border Village/other stuff in the third. (And those are just the mistakes I noticed). That being said, you'd think that by the time you get to 5000 you at least have basic opening strategy down.
Secondly, some strategy advice. I would have thought that it would be advice for beginners, but it turns out that it's advice for players with ratings up to about 5000. So, three things come to mind from this game which may be useful to players of all skill levels. One: Don't base Market Square on a one-time trash. It's just not a good idea. Two: $3P is a value which you miss about 30% of the time (IIRC) on a Potion/Silver opening. Trying to get $4P on turn 3/4 is even harder and $6P is almost impossible. If the goal of your potion is to get a Golem or Possession, don't open with it. Three: Cursing is good. Really good. Even with trashing in the game, if you're trashing curses you aren't trashing your starting cards. You want to open with Cursing if you can and get it ASAP if you can't.
There, that's a bunch of ranting and rage which I needed to share, but which may or may not be of any interest to anyone.
This leads to this gem. I open with Sea Hag which he ignores all game and when I'm up 40-7 he resigns and asks to make it a best of 5 series. I have the time, so I accept.
Game 3 is an engine based on Border Village, Hunting Grounds, Bridge, and Golem with Treasury and Baker for support. We both go for it and despite his Potion opening, he causes a three-pile ending to win.
Finally, we play this game which again features Sea Hag. He ignores it, and opens Potion, getting 2 Transmutes but never a Possession while I keep giving him Curses. Thanks to trashing, he's able to end with only 2, but my Courtyard-BM approach with a Sea Hag and Lookout beats his interesting engine/Rebuild mix.
Now, where am I going with this? Well, two places. First, this is evidence to me that Goko's rating system sucks. I can't believe that a player can pass 5000 and still ignore Sea Hag, go for Treasure Map/Market Square, and open Potion on a Golem board, or a Transmute/Possession board. And this is not the first time I've seen this kind of play at what I thought was a high level. I won't say that I played any of those games perfectly; I accidentally trashed too much on a Forge play in the first one, and missed some opportunities for Border Village/other stuff in the third. (And those are just the mistakes I noticed). That being said, you'd think that by the time you get to 5000 you at least have basic opening strategy down.
Secondly, some strategy advice. I would have thought that it would be advice for beginners, but it turns out that it's advice for players with ratings up to about 5000. So, three things come to mind from this game which may be useful to players of all skill levels. One: Don't base Market Square on a one-time trash. It's just not a good idea. Two: $3P is a value which you miss about 30% of the time (IIRC) on a Potion/Silver opening. Trying to get $4P on turn 3/4 is even harder and $6P is almost impossible. If the goal of your potion is to get a Golem or Possession, don't open with it. Three: Cursing is good. Really good. Even with trashing in the game, if you're trashing curses you aren't trashing your starting cards. You want to open with Cursing if you can and get it ASAP if you can't.
There, that's a bunch of ranting and rage which I needed to share, but which may or may not be of any interest to anyone.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card
« on: June 24, 2013, 06:07:57 pm »
Apparently, yes.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Would folks be interested in a polling tournament for cards?
« on: June 24, 2013, 05:08:30 pm »
Agreed with ftl. This will take a while, and so you probably want to just finish everything quickly or everyone will just lose interest over time. And if it's popular, you can do a bigger double-elimination tournament later.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card
« on: June 24, 2013, 04:53:50 pm »Stef game simulator:
*click*
*click*
*click*
*click*
*click*
*click*
"Hey! I might beat Stef!"
*click*
*click*
*click*
"That's possible?!?!?!?!?"
YOU LOSE
There, now you aren't missing anything.
FTFY
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Non-Mafia Game Threads / Re: Blokus I
« on: June 24, 2013, 01:26:28 pm »Xeiron
Arechetype: At some point you left a piece yellow on your pieces list. I marked it with a grey square. (And it's not the single square
)
84
General Discussion / Re: Dr. Who
« on: June 22, 2013, 02:00:01 pm »Matt Smith is my favorite doctor but David Tenant is terrific too. I'd love to have seen David Tenant in some episodes with higher production quality so I'm very excited about the 50th anniversary special. The Ponds are my favorite companions but honestly I really like all of them. I LOVE Riversong. Her episodes tend to be my favorites, she might just be my favorite character in the whole Who universe. I'm not emotionally prepared for when her arc will inevitably end.
It "ended" when we first met her. Sort of. She did die!
I know I know I know. But surely there will be some sort of hoopla whenshe actually leaves.
Consider that we've also seen the other end of her timeline with the Doctor already (In "Let's Kill Hitler").
Yes but...surely with a character as important as River they will find some way to indicate that she's leaving the show. If she just disappears without ceremony I won't be able to handle it...
You know who's disappearance without a ceremony I really didn't like? Rory's.
Amy gets this whole drama as she leaves, but Rory just gets touched by an angel and is gone. I really liked Rory, was sad to see him go (but didn't mind Amy leaving) and was even more disappointed that he just disappeared without ceremony.
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Game Reports / One of the weirder decks I've built
« on: June 22, 2013, 12:47:28 pm »
I can now say that I have bought Vagrant over Silver!
http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130622/log.50ec3d53e4b0429cfe0934be.1371919356522.txt
I open 5/2 so I go for Mystic/Vagrant with the idea being that when Vagrants fail, Mystics can draw cards. I probably should have picked up a Remake earlier, and I think a Haggler might have also helped, but I still did reasonably well thanks to my 8 Mystics. And, in the early game I preferred Vagrant to Silver.
http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130622/log.50ec3d53e4b0429cfe0934be.1371919356522.txt
I open 5/2 so I go for Mystic/Vagrant with the idea being that when Vagrants fail, Mystics can draw cards. I probably should have picked up a Remake earlier, and I think a Haggler might have also helped, but I still did reasonably well thanks to my 8 Mystics. And, in the early game I preferred Vagrant to Silver.
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Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas
« on: June 21, 2013, 03:26:22 pm »For the record, here in Canada we use BEDMAS as our mnemonic. The E stands for Exponents. B is for Brackets, even though we all know that they are properly called Parentheses.It's just a mnemonic; we're taught that addition and subtraction are on the same level and we go left-to-right in that case.
I'm also Canadian, and I did K-9 in a French Immersion school, where we used PEDMAS. I was mildly surprised, when Parentheses became Brackets in High School.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: "Guilds" could have been named "Chancellors"
« on: June 21, 2013, 02:07:38 pm »Not that this is definitive, but if Qvist does a list next year, we'll see where this expansion falls.
Well, I expect Soothsayer to be in the top 10 $5s, and Candlestick Maker will probably be in the top 10 $2s. I think Taxman will pass Cutpurse, and Plaza will be one of the top $4 Villages. Doctor will likely get a reasonably strong spot on the $3 list. Those are my predictions.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: "Guilds" could have been named "Chancellors"
« on: June 21, 2013, 11:14:31 am »
I really want to try out Candlestick Maker or Plaza with Poor House.
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Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko: Gentleman Althalos
« on: June 21, 2013, 11:10:28 am »
Yeah, after I wrote my strategy, I realized that because of Goons, Council Room is much better than Vault in this deck, so I would revise my strategy to be one Cr, one Vault, and then more CRs.
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General Discussion / Re: Dr. Who
« on: June 21, 2013, 01:20:21 am »Matt Smith is my favorite doctor but David Tenant is terrific too. I'd love to have seen David Tenant in some episodes with higher production quality so I'm very excited about the 50th anniversary special. The Ponds are my favorite companions but honestly I really like all of them. I LOVE Riversong. Her episodes tend to be my favorites, she might just be my favorite character in the whole Who universe. I'm not emotionally prepared for when her arc will inevitably end.
It "ended" when we first met her. Sort of. She did die!
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Dominion: Guilds Previews / Re: Merchant Guild
« on: June 21, 2013, 01:18:04 am »
Here's my Merchant Guild engine. The VP curve explains it all.
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General Discussion / Re: Dr. Who
« on: June 21, 2013, 01:16:23 am »My favorite quote is "Demons run when a good man goes to war." I like it when the Doctor shows his dark side.
Isn't that a light side? Or is he the demon in the quote?
IIRC, he's the good man. But generally he's the one running. From basically everything.
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General Discussion / Re: Dr. Who
« on: June 21, 2013, 12:24:03 am »
I've watched all of the rebooted series except for most of season 5, just haven't got around to it. I really like Blink as well, and I like the weeping angels there, but I agree with WW that after that they become a typical villain, quite disappointing. My favorite season has to be season 4; I really like Donna and there's a great string of episodes from Planet of the Ood all the way to Journey's end interrupted only by The Unicorn and the Wasp. Actually, I really like the whole season except for that one and Fires of Pompeii, although I didn't find Midnight that great. Maybe I should try it again.
I've only seen one serial from the old series; a Tom Baker episode entitled The Seeds of Doom. That was a fun episode to watch.
Agree with you completely there, I really don't like what he's done with the show.
I've only seen one serial from the old series; a Tom Baker episode entitled The Seeds of Doom. That was a fun episode to watch.
I have loathed what Steven Moffat's done to the show since Season 6, but I'm pretty hopeful for where he goes after Season 7 since things will be forced to change up a bit. Don't get me wrong; I like Moffat fine, but I think he's better at writing one-off episodes that are tight and focused than he is at running the show.
Agree with you completely there, I really don't like what he's done with the show.
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General Discussion / Re: How old are you?
« on: June 20, 2013, 06:59:02 pm »The sum of the digits of my age is the first positive composite integer that is not a perfect square.
That would be 6, making you 6, 15, 24, 33, 42, 51, 60, 111111, or a number of possible 3-5 digit ages.
But I saw from another thread that you're 15.
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Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko: Gentleman Althalos
« on: June 20, 2013, 06:02:00 pm »
So, the obvious key cards on this board are Witch, Goons and King's Court; with the first two being powerful attacks and KC just amplifying the power of whatever else is in your deck. These guys, along with some good +cards in Council Room and Vault, and a Village in Worker's Village with +Buy everywhere, just scream "ENGINE!!!" at you. So, you probably want to avoid Bureaucrat, minimize your use of Silver beyond the early game, and try to focus on Gold, Platinum and maybe Bank for treasure, although you probably want KC over Bank and Goons over Gold, and want to use KC-ed Goons or Woodcutters and Vaults as your +$.
The big thing that this board lacks for an engine is trashing or sifting, so you'll need more action cards than normal to get any consistency in an engine. Also, the curses will really mess up your engine, so you need to be cursing as soon as you can.
So, my game plan:
Open Silver/Silver, try to get 2 Witches ASAP, get Worker's Villages on your $4s, and on $3 prioritize Woodcutter over Silver unless you think you'll have a lot of terminal collisions. From there, try to get a Goons ASAP, and keep getting Workers Villages. You also want to buy as many KCs as you can, and on $5 get one Council Room and then Vaults. If you ever get stuck with only $2, you may want a Moat, but I don't think so. Your goal will be to get a bunch of Goons going, and get a pile of chips as the game progresses. You'll probably still want to get Colonies, but you can probably avoid Provinces until there's about 3 Colonies left.
The big thing that this board lacks for an engine is trashing or sifting, so you'll need more action cards than normal to get any consistency in an engine. Also, the curses will really mess up your engine, so you need to be cursing as soon as you can.
So, my game plan:
Open Silver/Silver, try to get 2 Witches ASAP, get Worker's Villages on your $4s, and on $3 prioritize Woodcutter over Silver unless you think you'll have a lot of terminal collisions. From there, try to get a Goons ASAP, and keep getting Workers Villages. You also want to buy as many KCs as you can, and on $5 get one Council Room and then Vaults. If you ever get stuck with only $2, you may want a Moat, but I don't think so. Your goal will be to get a bunch of Goons going, and get a pile of chips as the game progresses. You'll probably still want to get Colonies, but you can probably avoid Provinces until there's about 3 Colonies left.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Possession...
« on: June 20, 2013, 01:03:37 pm »
My favourite thing I've done in a possession game is on a board with Colonies, Vault and Possession, I was going Vault-BM and then when my opponent picked up a Potion (with Possession as the only potion-cost card) I just started piledriving Provinces. I bought my first Province with $11 and my opponent was surprised, but it worked really well to slow his possession turns since he didn't want to buy Provinces and my deck couldn't buy colonies.
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Help! / Re: I will try to post a game here every day.
« on: June 20, 2013, 12:58:08 pm »
Wow. I can't believe I missed HoP as a gainer. Wow. I guess I just thought "It's yellow, it doesn't count!"
I agree with your Feodum approach, but I'm still not sure if it beats the BM approach.
I agree with your Feodum approach, but I'm still not sure if it beats the BM approach.
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Help! / Re: I will try to post a game here every day.
« on: June 20, 2013, 12:43:43 pm »
I don't like Feodum here, because you can't trash them for the Silver flood, and because you can't gain extra Silver easily. +Buy can help get extra cards, but you need to get a lot of coin for that and with no card way to increase your handsize except Ironmonger, you're going to have trouble getting +Buy.
There are two things I would do to make Feodum easier to go for here. First, I would pick up a Contraband or 2. This helps get you good economy and +Buy. Since you're taking a non-standard route, Contraband is harder to block a card for and you should probably be able to pick up double-Silver or Silver-Feodum buys with Contraband because of the $3 it gives you. The other thing I would do is prioritize Candlestick Maker over Pawn. It gives you the Buys you want, as well as helping you store coin for a good Silver/Feodum or double Feodum turn. A lot of your Pawns were actually fairly useless as you went card/action a bunch of times. I do like the Ironmongers here as well though.
That being said, I probably wouldn't go for Feodum on this board, because of the lack of Silver gain and Feodum trashing. Instead, I would probably open Candlestick Maker/Silver and build up a bunch of coin tokens throughout the game, probably getting 3-4 CMs. I would also get a Contraband, and then otherwise get Gold and Silver, maybe a Bank on $7. Save the tokens until you want to green. Once I want to green, I would start using my Tokens to consistently hit $8, $13 or $16 depending on what you want and can get.
There are two things I would do to make Feodum easier to go for here. First, I would pick up a Contraband or 2. This helps get you good economy and +Buy. Since you're taking a non-standard route, Contraband is harder to block a card for and you should probably be able to pick up double-Silver or Silver-Feodum buys with Contraband because of the $3 it gives you. The other thing I would do is prioritize Candlestick Maker over Pawn. It gives you the Buys you want, as well as helping you store coin for a good Silver/Feodum or double Feodum turn. A lot of your Pawns were actually fairly useless as you went card/action a bunch of times. I do like the Ironmongers here as well though.
That being said, I probably wouldn't go for Feodum on this board, because of the lack of Silver gain and Feodum trashing. Instead, I would probably open Candlestick Maker/Silver and build up a bunch of coin tokens throughout the game, probably getting 3-4 CMs. I would also get a Contraband, and then otherwise get Gold and Silver, maybe a Bank on $7. Save the tokens until you want to green. Once I want to green, I would start using my Tokens to consistently hit $8, $13 or $16 depending on what you want and can get.