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[Vermillion]

I've been getting some interesting boards lately. How would you play this one?

On 3/4, I believe I went silver/Feast (for MB) and followed up with a second MB ASAP.

BTW - I have that log parser installed on chrome; how do I go back and look at old games?

[sudgy]

Um...  There's no board here.

[SCSN]

You haven't posted the actual board, but if you don't mind having Silvers in your deck (and with Mountebank out there, you definitely don't), I would always prefer Silver/Silver to Silver/Feast, because Feast hurts your early economy too much. I strayed from my one advice once in recent memory. Wanting to be assured of a quick Cultist, I opened Feast/Silver. I got my Cultist, but not thanks to Feast, which missed the reshuffle and I didn't get around to playing it until T9 or so.

BTW - I have that log parser installed on chrome; how do I go back and look at old games?

Use this: http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/

[Titandrake]

If I were playing for the win, I'd do Silver/Silver into Mountebanks and money. Spice Merchant might be okay to pick up, but I'm not sure how useful it would be. You can trash the Copper you gain, but not the Curse, so its benefit is going to be fairly limited. I'd skip it, but I'd like a second opinion on Copper trasher + Mountebank in the kingdom. Picking up anything else is too slow: Border Village isn't that good. Nobles aren't that good without another source of +Actions. The junk that comes in from Mountebank is probably far too much to make any sort of engine viable, so a Mountebank-BM plan is best.

Now, if I were playing to see if I could build an interesting deck...

There's no way to trash the Curses here. That's a big strike against an engine plan. However, there is a way to skip those Curses, and that's with Golem. Now, getting that Golem is going to be difficult. But here's how the plan would ideally go. Pick up a Spice Merchant early, and start trashing Coppers. Spice Merchant is also the only source of +Buy, so be careful. Get a Quarry, and use Spice Merchant/Quarry to buy lots of engine pieces. Nobles, Border Villages, a Mountebank or 2, more Spice Merchants and Havens and Conspirators. Get some Golems too. Eventually, your goal is to get a decent number of Golems, play those Golems to play all your actions, then Haven away a couple of Golems. This should guarantee that you can play lots of Golems each turn, and with enough Havens/Golems you can essentially ignore Mountebank's attack. Your opponent's Mountebanks will feed Spice Merchant Copper for +Buy, and will force them to either treat Mountebank as a dead card or give you more fuel.

The problem is that the engine is probably waaaay too slow with Mountebank clogging it up. But it sounds nice.

[dondon151]

With a better +buy card, I would go engine all the way. Even as it is I would probably still go for the engine.

[eHalcyon]

I would open Spice Merchant/Silver, aiming for Mountebank.  If I get $6+ before $5, I would take BV+Mountebank before Gold.  Not sure about a second Mountebank before Gold.  I would use SM for coin to get the MB, but after I have one I will usually prefer to play for cards to increase cycling.  SM is nice for removing some of the incoming junk and cycling to play your own MB more often.

I don't think I would play for the engine because of the heavy junking.  But the Golem engine as described is pretty attractive... Still, I think it would be pretty tough to get it to multi-Province turns, so I prefer the money deck.

[dondon151]

People like to think that heavy junking automatically means no engine. This is sure to lose them games.

The engine player will almost certainly be picking up Nobles. He will also definitely get his own Mountebank. With some alt VP on the board, the engine player doesn't necessarily need to double-Province to be able to win, since there are Duchies and Nobles to catch up with.

[Titandrake]

Actually, I just realized something. Having a Curser in the kingdom does not necessarily make it less engine friendly. In fact, if the engine is fast enough, it actually helps the engine. Compared to a "buy curser, then go money" strategy, it starts out slower. But, if you spend early buys building up the engine, and can get it going fast enough (with Curses coming in) that you can play a Witch or Mountebank every turn, then soon you'll have the upper hand. This idea generalizes to all attacks, but for some reason I've only thought of it in terms of discarding attacks until now.

So, instead of assuming that Curser = Big Money, I should instead be thinking, is building the engine quick enough to let me retake the lead in time? And here, it seems the engine has a decent shot at this. Spice Merchant is early trashing, and Quarry is a great accelerant for buying Actions. It's very rough at the start, and the lack of good +Buy really hurts, but it's a lot more plausible than I initially thought.

Edit: and dondon pretty much said what I was typing, while I was typing it.

Post-edit edit: With Quarry, you might want to skip the Golem trick entirely, and load up on BV/Nobles instead. This is probably smarter. If you have enough Curses that you'd want the Golem to skip to your Actions, then you go for it, but by that point it would be clear that the money strategy was better anyways.

[DG]

I've tried to put this through the simulator and the simple approach of mountebanks (+ border village) + late nobles is quite robust. I did manage to get a competitive engine but it was ultimately a similar deck again with golems and more nobles. A lot of the other cards such as the spice merchant and quarry might just be distractions.

I suppose the theory is that the mountebanks do the most damage on the first attacks and become increasingly harmless. Even in this kingdom with golems you cannot punish your opponent severely by playing mountebanks repeatedly in the mid/late game. If you are not building an engine to harness the attacks then are you building one for the economy? Engine components such as border village, nobles, spice merchant, and feast all have to bought instead of a useful treasure and it ultimately isn't worth it.

[Vermillion]

Um...  There's no board here.

There is an attached photo. Do you not see it?

[Vermillion]

You haven't posted the actual board, but if you don't mind having Silvers in your deck (and with Mountebank out there, you definitely don't), I would always prefer Silver/Silver to Silver/Feast, because Feast hurts your early economy too much. I strayed from my one advice once in recent memory. Wanting to be assured of a quick Cultist, I opened Feast/Silver. I got my Cultist, but not thanks to Feast, which missed the reshuffle and I didn't get around to playing it until T9 or so.

BTW - I have that log parser installed on chrome; how do I go back and look at old games?

Use this: http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/

Thanks, bro. It  seems not to be working right now (because Goko seems down?) but I'll try later.

[gman314]

Um...  There's no board here.

There is an attached photo. Do you not see it?

I don't.

[Pneumatiker]

The board is:

Haven
Conspirator
Feast
Quarry
Spice Merchant
Golem
Mountebank
Tribute
Border Village
Nobles

[Vermillion]

I've tried to put this through the simulator and the simple approach of mountebanks (+ border village) + late nobles is quite robust. I did manage to get a competitive engine but it was ultimately a similar deck again with golems and more nobles. A lot of the other cards such as the spice merchant and quarry might just be distractions.

I suppose the theory is that the mountebanks do the most damage on the first attacks and become increasingly harmless. Even in this kingdom with golems you cannot punish your opponent severely by playing mountebanks repeatedly in the mid/late game. If you are not building an engine to harness the attacks then are you building one for the economy? Engine components such as border village, nobles, spice merchant, and feast all have to bought instead of a useful treasure and it ultimately isn't worth it.

In the simulator, I understand how to construct buy instructions, but not the script that tells the simulator how to play the cards. How do you do that?

[Vermillion]

Um...  There's no board here.

There is an attached photo. Do you not see it?

I don't.

Huh. It seems some people can and some can't. Here's an imgur to what I see: http://i.imgur.com/idaUK4R.png

[Vermillion]

I can't find my log on this game. Drunken SAilor doesn't seem to be working ATM.

On second thought, my gut says to win, go silver/quary and get to BV+mont, then another mont, then start BM, grabbing one spice merchant along the way.

I'll pull the log shortly.

[gman314]

You haven't posted the actual board, but if you don't mind having Silvers in your deck (and with Mountebank out there, you definitely don't), I would always prefer Silver/Silver to Silver/Feast, because Feast hurts your early economy too much. I strayed from my one advice once in recent memory. Wanting to be assured of a quick Cultist, I opened Feast/Silver. I got my Cultist, but not thanks to Feast, which missed the reshuffle and I didn't get around to playing it until T9 or so.

Agreed. I've had a few games where I've opened Feast to get an attack, bought the attack without it and had Feast as an extra Terminal that I didn't want to play as much as other cards for most of the game.

The board is:

Haven
Conspirator
Feast
Quarry
Spice Merchant
Golem
Mountebank
Tribute
Border Village
Nobles

Knowing the board, I would prefer to open with Quarry rather than Feast. This helps you get Mountebank and also gives you options like Border Village/Mountebank or Border Village/Duchy in the late game. Picking up Nobles for the + Cards might also be useful, but it's a high opportunity cost. I would definitely try to pick up a Spice Merchant at some point to help deal with the incoming Coppers, and because it's the only + Buy, but I don't want to open with it because it doesn't help as much as Quarry in getting to Mountebank.

You probably want to keep an eye on three-piling with Curse, Border Village and some cheaper pile (maybe haven), and want to get Duchies accordingly. Or, if you want to green earlier, Nobles can help you get a bit of a lead. But, Nobles is just about useless in a colony game.

[HiveMindEmulator]

If your opponent is really just going to play Mountebank(s)+money, then sure an engine can win by grabbing all the Nobles, but I think this is one of those cases where if the money guy just buys some Nobles, he'll be in good shape. The engine really isn't all that good. The only way to get any reliability without being able to trash Curses or Estates is via Golem, but then you're talking about something that's going to take a long time to set up on a board that is probably not going to even drain all the Provinces. Curses, Nobles, Border Villages, Duchies -- maybe even Havens -- are all threatening to run out.

I think I'd open Quarry/Silver and just grab Mountebanks, Border Village, and Nobles. Against an engine, the goal is just to win the Curse war, get enough Nobles that the engine is going to struggle, and then win on Duchies.

Spice Merchant opening is too slow to Mountebank and doesn't do enough to offset that. And then later I don't think getting one later does enough good to be worth it either.

[Schlippy]

If it is a colony game: Engine, opening with Quarry and Haven (yes, I am serious)
Otherwise: No real engine, opening with Quarry and Silver. If he plays his first Mountebank a turn before me I will buy Nobles, if I play it a turn before him or both in the same turn, I will pick up a second Quarry and a Spice Merchant and empty either Border Village and Duchy or when BV 'empties itself' Nobles and the occasional BV/Duchy (or only Duchy), depending on the points and piles.

[DG]

In the simulator, I understand how to construct buy instructions, but not the script that tells the simulator how to play the cards. How do you do that?

Geronimoo put together card play rules that are used by the bots in his simulator. They are not perfect but they are some of the best play rules around, probably better than those used the Goko bots. In this kingdom the play rules will probably be fine except for the spice merchant decision (coins/cards) and I'm allowing for that when interpreting the simulator results.

[Awaclus]

I'd open Quarry/Silver, aiming for Border Village/Mountebank in the early/mid game and Nobles in mid game, get a SM at some point and go for the engine. You probably won't run out of copper to trash for SM in a Mountebank game, and that's a good enough source of +buy. Golem is nice against junking, and it's possibly worth getting.

5/2 opening is obvious.

[ragingduckd]

Use this: http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/

Thanks, bro. It  seems not to be working right now (because Goko seems down?) but I'll try later.

DrunkenSailor doesn't depend on Goko. When it goes down, it's because something is wrong on my end. If you get an error, first try reloading the page (it can have some very short-term problems). If that doesn't work, then I'll probably need to fix it manually, and the sooner I know about it the better. Please send me a PM or email.