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[minovsky]

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University, Forager, Scheme, Advisor, Island, Navigator, Tournament, Mountebank, Soothsayer, Wharf
I genuinely want to get better at dominion but it looks like despite i am playing a lot more than my friend and have been reading wiki / checking out the forum I still get defeated almost every time... 

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140310/log.51700897e4b082c74d7e73e4.1394465110146.txt
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140310/log.51700897e4b082c74d7e73e4.1394467096884.txt
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140310/log.51700897e4b082c74d7e73e4.1394469257056.txt (friend left so played with bots)

some questions:
1) for game 1 and game 3, opponent managed to open with soothsayer with 2/5, i tried to counter the curses buy getting islands (until i have 5 coins to get my own soothsayer / mountebank), is that the right thing to do?

2) Is using soothsayer to get gold better than buying treasures on my own? (at least in the earlier stage when the deck cycles faster)

3) the strategy that i was trying to go for was to buy university whenever possible (the free action cards and +2 Actions are worth it, is it?), then island early on to hope to set aside the junks, then scheme to be able to reuse the university next turn to get even more free action cards, then start to buy some wharf later on (sticking in some islands every now and then). but it clearly didn't work too well because I only managed to buy 1 province out of all 3 games, and that's from game 2 where i didn't even have a single gold (vs having 6 in game 3)... what am I doing wrong?

4) if i get to open with 2/5, is soothsayer or mountebank better for this kingdom?

finally in general, anymore tips on how i can better at dominion besides keep playing and reading the wiki? i don't mind losing a lot during the learning process but i just don't feel like i am improving at all...

Edit: modified title to make it clear it was a 3p game.

[Drab Emordnilap]

The main problem I think is that Island is not very fast at clearing you bad cards, and Island also makes it much harder to get to $5 to buy your own curser. Even if you manage to get enough islands, think of all the good cards your opponent bought in that time while you were busy with islands.

[JacquesTheBard]

Countering Curses with Islands is a poor idea, because the Islands are one-shot, terminal, and the negative points of curses still affect your score. Forager is substantially more important here. It's nonterminal, cheap, and can be used over and over again. Once some coppers wind up in the trash, it even gives money. Pick up 2 or 3 of them, maybe more. With Mountebank's insane junking, you'll almost certainly need more than one.

Mountebank junks twice, Soothsayer once. The Gold is cool, but in the short term and even the long term, I expect Mountebank to come out on top. Wharf is usually a good card, but Mountebank is even more crucial.

I am not sure about how to handle University here. It lets you get some good fives, on a board very heavy with them, provides you with +action, and also can get tournaments, schemes and islands when you have all the terminals you want. However, the first few Mountebanks are very urgent, so buying potion over Silver and waiting until your first University play, roughly 3 shuffles in, to get one is catastrophic.

[silverspawn]

ok without reading the logs I'll answer the general questions

1) for game 1 and game 3, opponent managed to open with soothsayer with 2/5, i tried to counter the curses buy getting islands (until i have 5 coins to get my own soothsayer / mountebank), is that the right thing to do?

so, firstly, you wouldn't open soothsayer with 2/5. you open mountebank. mountebank is really good. like, reeeeealy good. arguably strongest card in the game good. it junks twice, it's ridiculous. much better than soothsayer, in general and on this board.

but no, buying islads to deal with curses is usually a losing strategy, and it definitely is here.

2) Is using soothsayer to get gold better than buying treasures on my own? (at least in the earlier stage when the deck cycles faster)

it's much better, but on this board, both is bad.

3) the strategy that i was trying to go for was to buy university whenever possible (the free action cards and +2 Actions are worth it, is it?), then island early on to hope to set aside the junks, then scheme to be able to reuse the university next turn to get even more free action cards, then start to buy some wharf later on (sticking in some islands every now and then). but it clearly didn't work too well because I only managed to buy 1 province out of all 3 games, and that's from game 2 where i didn't even have a single gold (vs having 6 in game 3)... what am I doing wrong?

So, I'll just explain how you play this board correctly. The important cards here are: University, Mountebank, Wharf, (Tournament). Open potion, always buy university if possible. Get ~2 Mountebanks (they are just sooo good you can't skip them) then get wharfs, pretty much until the pile is depleated. If you don't hit 5$, get either a tournament or a sheme. Depending on how the game goes, you can try to sneak an early province to get prices. Soothsayer, Navigator and Island are non-factors. Advisor is only relevant after Wharfs are gone.

Why do you do this: well, island is just way too slow to deal with junk, and forager kind of is too. You don't need money here, because university lets you get all the good cards, and its more important to get your engine running than to have lots of treasures in it. And wharf is also just an extremely strong card, it draws 4 cards. The powerlevel is simply too high for something like Island to compeat.

I am not sure about how to handle University here. It lets you get some good fives, on a board very heavy with them, provides you with +action, and also can get tournaments, schemes and islands when you have all the terminals you want. However, the first few Mountebanks are very urgent, so buying potion over Silver and waiting until your first University play, roughly 3 shuffles in, to get one is catastrophic.

usually you'd be right, mountebank is so good that you may want to open silver/silver to get it faster and skip university. however, i think here you don't, because of wharf. Wharf will let you catch up, you're pretty much guaranteed to win the split if your opponent goes silver/silver and then it doesn't really matter if you have one curse more in your deck

[GeoLib]

I think your thread title says a lot. You need to be able to recognize the key cards. Wharf is almost never not a key card and soothsayer is not even close to mountebank as a curser. Island is definitely inferior to forager for curse trashing. Tournament is also pretty good, though the presence of mountebank makes getting followers much less exciting. I'm not sure whether university is the right way to go here, but I think it is. Yes you'll be delayed getting a mountebank, but you'll also be able to pick up $5s consistently in a junked deck. If you get university you can avoid money for a while.

I think I would open forager/potion on 3/4, not even trying to hit $5. Get university wherever possible. First $5 should be mountebank and then I think a few wharfs before a second mountebank depending on the state of the curse pile. On the next $3 hand I would buy a second forager assuming my opponent is also cursing (which they should be). Get tournament on $4 after that or silver if my deck is still pretty junked.

On 5/2 I would definitely open mountebank and then probably follow a pretty similar plan to above.

[Kirian]

Forager.

There's little more to say.  After Mountebank, Forager is the most important card here.  It's very good trashing at its price.

I would likely open with two Foragers on 3/4, and not worry about Potion or Mountebank until I had trashed down quite a bit.

[shark_bait]

A few notes. 

This is a multi-player game.  Assuming both opponents are going for either Mountebank/Soothsayer cursing, you should go for Wharf.

I will say it again.  You should initially ignore the cursing and go for Wharf. 

Your opponents are already junking each other so how often will your Mountebank actually hit?  (Hint, not very often)  What Wharf offers is increased cycling.  *Hooray*  This cycling will both get to Universities faster so that you can gain more Wharves, get to your Potion faster so that you can get more Universities and get to your Foragers faster so that you can trash down.

I know I'm the only one saying this right now but I believe this is especially true in a 3-player game.  Not quite as much in a 2-player game.  For 2-player I would probably want 1 Mountebank and then power through the Wharves.

[silverspawn]

Forager.

There's little more to say.  After Mountebank, Forager is the most important card here.  It's very good trashing at its price.

I would likely open with two Foragers on 3/4, and not worry about Potion or Mountebank until I had trashed down quite a bit.

that's bad. sorry to say it like that, but it is. if there were any other junker, it might be a different story, but if you try to trash against mountebank you're running into a trap. he deals out two junk cards instead of one - monstrous difference - and because you are trashing, you guarantee him to hit all the time. you always lose 2 cards when you trash one junk card, and get just +1$ in return. he gets +2$ and loses just one card when dealing them out.

i learned this lesson on a board where there was forager and mountebank. i opened double forager, he opened double silver and i got destroyed

[Kirian]

Forager.

There's little more to say.  After Mountebank, Forager is the most important card here.  It's very good trashing at its price.

I would likely open with two Foragers on 3/4, and not worry about Potion or Mountebank until I had trashed down quite a bit.

that's bad. sorry to say it like that, but it is. if there were any other junker, it might be a different story, but if you try to trash against mountebank you're running into a trap. he deals out two junk cards instead of one - monstrous difference - and because you are trashing, you guarantee him to hit all the time. you always lose 2 cards when you trash one junk card, and get just +1$ in return. he gets +2$ and loses just one card when dealing them out.

i learned this lesson on a board where there was forager and mountebank. i opened double forager, he opened double silver and i got destroyed

Well it's too bad there isn't a better $3 trasher like Lookout on the board.

However, you do have a partial point, which I didn't make clear; two Foragers won't be enough.

In any case, no opening on this board is likely to overcome a 5/2 Mountebank.

[shark_bait]

Forager.

There's little more to say.  After Mountebank, Forager is the most important card here.  It's very good trashing at its price.

I would likely open with two Foragers on 3/4, and not worry about Potion or Mountebank until I had trashed down quite a bit.

that's bad. sorry to say it like that, but it is. if there were any other junker, it might be a different story, but if you try to trash against mountebank you're running into a trap. he deals out two junk cards instead of one - monstrous difference - and because you are trashing, you guarantee him to hit all the time. you always lose 2 cards when you trash one junk card, and get just +1$ in return. he gets +2$ and loses just one card when dealing them out.

i learned this lesson on a board where there was forager and mountebank. i opened double forager, he opened double silver and i got destroyed

You want Potion/Forager.  The thing about double Forager is that it will never get to $5.  University allows for getting to $5 whilst still trashing.  Wharf allows for fast cycling so that Forager can keep up with trashing.  Also, if you selectively trash Estates and Copper over Curse you can mitigate some of the damage.

As for your kingdom, without the rest of the cards you can't really make any general conclusions.

[silverspawn]

Forager.

There's little more to say.  After Mountebank, Forager is the most important card here.  It's very good trashing at its price.

I would likely open with two Foragers on 3/4, and not worry about Potion or Mountebank until I had trashed down quite a bit.

that's bad. sorry to say it like that, but it is. if there were any other junker, it might be a different story, but if you try to trash against mountebank you're running into a trap. he deals out two junk cards instead of one - monstrous difference - and because you are trashing, you guarantee him to hit all the time. you always lose 2 cards when you trash one junk card, and get just +1$ in return. he gets +2$ and loses just one card when dealing them out.

i learned this lesson on a board where there was forager and mountebank. i opened double forager, he opened double silver and i got destroyed

Well it's too bad there isn't a better $3 trasher like Lookout on the board.

However, you do have a partial point, which I didn't make clear; two Foragers won't be enough.

In any case, no opening on this board is likely to overcome a 5/2 Mountebank.

no the point is that if you trash and your opponent junks with mountebank, you lose in this equation. it might be different with potion, but if it is, it's because of potion, if there's no university and you open double forager on a mountebank board, you're in a bad spot.

forager/forager is a bad opening, i'm certain of that. potion/forager might be a thing, though I wouldn't open with it.

I'm sorry if I have offended you, I didn't mean to. If you want, we can play some matches with forager and mountebank, that'll likely demonstrate why forager isn't a good idea.

[markusin]

Forager is great and all, but opening with Forager makes it harder to buy expensive cards early. If the expensive cards you need are Bazaars or Rabbles or something, then it's not such a big deal. If, however, the key cards at $5+ are cards like Mountebank and King's Court then the Forager opening (and especially Forager/Forager) is likely to fall short.

[WanderingWinder]

Forager.

There's little more to say.  After Mountebank, Forager is the most important card here.  It's very good trashing at its price.

I would likely open with two Foragers on 3/4, and not worry about Potion or Mountebank until I had trashed down quite a bit.

that's bad. sorry to say it like that, but it is. if there were any other junker, it might be a different story, but if you try to trash against mountebank you're running into a trap. he deals out two junk cards instead of one - monstrous difference - and because you are trashing, you guarantee him to hit all the time. you always lose 2 cards when you trash one junk card, and get just +1$ in return. he gets +2$ and loses just one card when dealing them out.

i learned this lesson on a board where there was forager and mountebank. i opened double forager, he opened double silver and i got destroyed

Well it's too bad there isn't a better $3 trasher like Lookout on the board.

However, you do have a partial point, which I didn't make clear; two Foragers won't be enough.

In any case, no opening on this board is likely to overcome a 5/2 Mountebank.

no the point is that if you trash and your opponent junks with mountebank, you lose in this equation. it might be different with potion, but if it is, it's because of potion, if there's no university and you open double forager on a mountebank board, you're in a bad spot.

forager/forager is a bad opening, i'm certain of that. potion/forager might be a thing, though I wouldn't open with it.

I'm sorry if I have offended you, I didn't mean to. If you want, we can play some matches with forager and mountebank, that'll likely demonstrate why forager isn't a good idea.

I'm sorry if this offends you, but you're incredibly wrong. You can definitely hold off mountebanks with foragers, in the general case. You do definitely need some engine help, but it's absolutely possible. Universities DEFINITELY don't let you hold mountebank off, but an engine with trashing, yes, including forager trashing, is enough.

Here, it's 3-player, so things change rather a lot. The engine is also not very good, as University is the ONLY village. So I suspect you're not going to do well against a money-ish player, though he should also get lots of tournaments, a few Mountebanks, and a couple foragers.

[DG]

As you can tell from the different comments this isn't a simple kingdom. It isn't the same in 2 player as it is in 3 player. My view is that the forager can't keep up with the cursing attacks from the mountebank in three player, so will everyone buy mountebanks and treasures and that's the end of it? Maybe, maybe not. I'm guessing there are a few adversarial changes you can make to your play with choices of wharf, soothsayer or mountebank, maybe taking schemes, etc. On a 5/2 I would open mountebank though as the first hit is really damaging and prevents your opponents from ever getting to grip with their decks.

Islands are bad for large scale trashing. They selectively remove an isolated card. In multiplayer games you can rarely just rush islands for victory points and a 3 pile finish while the opponents are cursing each other but the islands will still never clear up the deck.

One important thing to remember with mountebanks is that curses are a defense. In multiplayer, curses can saturate the decks quite quickly. Trashing odd curses with a forager or keeping schemes from hand to hand is only going to weaken that defense.

With universities here you should also look at the number of +action cards in the kingdom and see it is just the university. This is a big limit on how you can put together an action based deck with the 5 cost terminals. Putting more universities into the deck might give you more +actions but since the universities do not give +coins or +cards they don't help you make province buying hands. If you went with universities in a two player game you would have to keep your actions under close control and tightly manage the deck, really tightly.

[terminalCopper]

usually you'd be right, mountebank is so good that you may want to open silver/silver to get it faster and skip university. however, i think here you don't, because of wharf. Wharf will let you catch up, you're pretty much guaranteed to win the split  [...]

I can hardly believe that university will be fast enough to counter mountebank - almost no matter what brilliant 5's are out there. On the one hand, most of the cards you want, are stop cards: Potion, Mountebank, some universities. On the other hand, your opponent will mountebank you.

Let me do a "quick and dirty" exemplary comparison:

University-Player (called UNI) gains before ...
shuffle 1: Potion, Silver
shuffle 2:  University, U1
shuffle 3:  University, U2, U3    +   Mountebank (from uni) + Copper + Curse (opp's mountebank)
shuffle 4: University, U4, U5, U6 +  Mountebank,Wharf (2 uni's) + Copper +Curse (opp's mountebank)

Mountebank-Player (MB) gains before ...
shuffle 1: Silver,Silver
shuffle 2: Mountebank,M1
shuffle 3: Mountebank,M2,M3
shuffle 4: Wharf,M4,M5,M6 + Copper+Curse (opp's mountebank)

Edit: U1 - U6 are the cards UNI might buy during the game, M1 - M6 might be bought bei MB.

Please note that from MB's perspective, this is a rather pessimistic prediction, for two reasons:
 - I assumed, only one of MB's mountebanks will hit after Shuffle 3 (I'd guess, in 30% of all games, both mountebanks will hit).
 - I ignored the risk of a dead move by UNI

Despite this cautios approach, I still don't want to play with UNI's deck. In a one-by-one-comparison, he has

+3 universities,
+1 copper,
+1 curse,
U2,U3 instead of M2,M3 (presumably slightly weaker)
U4,U5,U6 instead of  M4,M5,M6 (presumably much weaker)
1 potion instead of a silver.

If we look at the immediate impact, there are 2 additional weak  cards (1 copper, 1 curse) and 4 long-term cards (3 uni's, potion).
Furthermore, MB has a stronger economy to buy M4 to M6, they might be a province for the tournaments, some golds to do funny things with wharf, or simply more wharves ...
Thus, MB will still be dominant after 4 shuffles. We are in T12 right now,  UNI has 28 cards. And so, it will approximately be T16 when he can shuffle his "catch-up cards".
Way too late, imho: Mountebank/Wharf BM, only hindered by 1copper+1curse, might have three or more provinces right then.

PS:
 I admit, that this extrapolation might change a lot in the presence of very strong trashing. In evidence, if instead of silver, U1 - U3 you get four foragers, you might have trimmed your deck to ca. 21 cards in T12.

Then again, there won't be much time left to "win a wharf split".

[minovsky]

thanks for all the feedbacks, digesting all of them slowly...

it does look like there are lots of different opinions on what to do (the only consensus is I shouldn't go for island, noted!). The main discrepancy seems to be whether forager can trash fast enough or not, especially since there are 3 players here... I think I will try playing couple of times with different approaches, and I will probably switch a villager bot for a banker bot (I assume the banker bot goes for BM?)

One important thing to remember with mountebanks is that curses are a defense. In multiplayer, curses can saturate the decks quite quickly. Trashing odd curses with a forager or keeping schemes from hand to hand is only going to weaken that defense.

Never thought that scheme could actually be a problem... i will probably hold off on scheme as well for this...

University-Player (called UNI) gains before ...
shuffle 1: Potion, Silver
shuffle 2:  University, X_u
shuffle 3:  University, Y_u, Y_u    +   Mountebank (from uni) + Copper + Curse (opp's mountebank)
shuffle 4: University, Z_u, Z_u, Z_u +  Mountebank,Wharf (2 uni's) + Copper +Curse (opp's mountebank)

Mountebank-Player (MB) gains before ...
shuffle 1: Silver,Silver
shuffle 2: Mountebank,X_m
shuffle 3: Mountebank,Y_m,Y_m
shuffle 4: Wharf,Z_m,Z_m,Z_m + Copper+Curse (opp's mountebank)

Can you explain what X_u, Y_u, Z_u, etc are? thx

[ashersky]

I agree with WW and inc. here; I think that multiple Forager plays each turn keeps your deck cleared out, and the gained curses/coppers from opponent Mountebanks gives you Forager fodder every turn once your engine is drawing your deck every turn.

[minovsky]

just played again (Edit: twice).

game 4: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140310/log.51700897e4b082c74d7e73e4.1394517437605.txt
I must be doing something really wrong because I was able to open with mountebank while the other bots didn't but I still lost. my first 4 buys were 3 mountebanks and 1 forager, then i went university and wharf and couple of tournaments... what mistakes did I make here??

*****

game 5: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140310/log.51700897e4b082c74d7e73e4.1394518945088.txt
both bots opened potion/silver, i opened potion/forager. I need to rely on university to get mountebank in T5, bought a 2nd forager in T6 (both bots had 2 soothsayer each by then...), and in T7 got 2nd mountebank (from uni) and bought 2nd uni.

The soothsayers seemed to be very powerful, the game ended with only 2 golds left in the pile (the bots had 12 and 13, respectively), which makes me wonder why is almost everyone downplaying soothsayer here? could anyone explain?

I was losing out for the entire game since the bots have so much gold, saved only luckily by getting princess in T23 that got me a province and 4 0-cost estate, which then - since I schemed princess - got me another duchy (5 coins on my hand only!!!) and another 4 0-estate in T24, ending the game as the estate pile emptied, allowing me to make a dramatic comeback to win the game. That said, I am not pleased with how i played, surely i only managed to win because of pure luck from getting princess...

I have question about what I should have done in T4, when I had 4 coins. I opted for silver, should I have done otherwise?

In T19, I picked up a copper with my extra buy, because I was worried that I am running low on what I could thrash (3 curses and 4 coppers left in a 33 cards deck with 3 foragers, none of the bots had any mountebank). I spent a while thinking if i should do that actually... was that a stupid move?

I had 5 wharfs, and I only played it total of only 6 times in the game (searched for "duration" in the log), the first time being T16 by which I actually already have 4 wharfs in my deck... It sounds like I am not playing it right? (I have only 3 universities, maybe I should have balanced 1:1 instead? i.e. getting 2 more universities or getting 2 less wharfs?) That said, the duration-ed wharf saved me in the penultimate turn - T23 where I drew a gold that allowed me to just have enough to buy the province.

overall, I think forager did help significantly. perhaps the one thing that I was pleased with myself was in T9 when I decided to trash my silver so I can get +$2 for all the later turns. then again, if i was playing against humans, they would probably get at least one forager as well to free-ride on this...

[GeoLib]

Please note that I didn't realize that you were looking for advice on a 3p game (I didn't look at the logs, sorry. Just read the kingdom). I am far less confident in my ability to analyze 3p as I play almost exclusively 2p online and my IRL 3p is pretty casual. In 3p with two opponents going for junking it can often be beneficial to let them curse each other and focus on your own deck, so I think shark_bait might be right about ignoring mountebank entirely if both your opponents go for it. I think I would still open forager/potion, but focus on wharves and trashing instead of mountebank.

So, I'll just explain how you play this board correctly.

that's bad.

forager/forager is a bad opening, i'm certain of that. potion/forager might be a thing, though I wouldn't open with it.

I'm sorry if I have offended you, I didn't mean to. If you want, we can play some matches with forager and mountebank, that'll likely demonstrate why forager isn't a good idea.

Silverspawn, would it be possible for you to speak with a little less certainty and rudeness? I very much doubt that you have a complete handle on this kingdom. I don't necessarily disagree with all of your points (I am also not a fan of a double forager opening here), but the way you phrase them is extremely grating.

[minovsky]

Please note that I didn't realize that you were looking for advice on a 3p game (I didn't look at the logs, sorry. Just read the kingdom). I am far less confident in my ability to analyze 3p as I play almost exclusively 2p online and my IRL 3p is pretty casual. In 3p with two opponents going for junking it can often be beneficial to let them curse each other and focus on your own deck, so I think shark_bait might be right about ignoring mountebank entirely if both your opponents go for it. I think I would still open forager/potion, but focus on wharves and trashing instead of mountebank.

So, I'll just explain how you play this board correctly.

that's bad.

forager/forager is a bad opening, i'm certain of that. potion/forager might be a thing, though I wouldn't open with it.

I'm sorry if I have offended you, I didn't mean to. If you want, we can play some matches with forager and mountebank, that'll likely demonstrate why forager isn't a good idea.

Silverspawn, would it be possible for you to speak with a little less certainty and rudeness? I very much doubt that you have a complete handle on this kingdom. I don't necessarily disagree with all of your points (I am also not a fan of a double forager opening here), but the way you phrase them is extremely grating.

hmmm I will be sure to note how many players are there in the game in the future, that's a good point. I didn't realize how much the game can be different between 2 or 3 players, so that's something new for me today I normally play 3 when it's with friend (having an extra bot there let us have something else to blame lol ), and 2 when i play alone (with a bot since I am too noob otherwise for anyone to be interested in playing with me). this is different because i lost miserably so I wanted to try to simulate the 3p again.

and I certainly hope there's no hard feelings between anyone here. I appreciate everyone's thoughts and suggestions to all my threads greatly, just hoping to learn how to analyze a board better

Forager is great and all, but opening with Forager makes it harder to buy expensive cards early. If the expensive cards you need are Bazaars or Rabbles or something, then it's not such a big deal. If, however, the key cards at $5+ are cards like Mountebank and King's Court then the Forager opening (and especially Forager/Forager) is likely to fall short.

just wondering why wouldn't bazaars and rabbles be that much of a deal?

[GeoLib]

just wondering why wouldn't bazaars and rabbles be that much of a deal?

They're not huge, game-changing cards that are important to get ASAP. Rabble is much better as a late-game attack and Bazaar is an expensive village that you only need once you've got some terminals. Mountebank is critical for early-game junking and KC is, well, KC. It's absurdly powerful.

[terminalCopper]

University-Player (called UNI) gains before ...
shuffle 1: Potion, Silver
shuffle 2:  University, X_u
shuffle 3:  University, Y_u, Y_u    +   Mountebank (from uni) + Copper + Curse (opp's mountebank)
shuffle 4: University, Z_u, Z_u, Z_u +  Mountebank,Wharf (2 uni's) + Copper +Curse (opp's mountebank)

Mountebank-Player (MB) gains before ...
shuffle 1: Silver,Silver
shuffle 2: Mountebank,X_m
shuffle 3: Mountebank,Y_m,Y_m
shuffle 4: Wharf,Z_m,Z_m,Z_m + Copper+Curse (opp's mountebank)

Can you explain what X_u, Y_u, Z_u, etc are? thx

Edit: I changed the names of the card variables, and gave a brief explanation. Is it easier to understand now? Feel free to ask again

[DG]

In game 4 you just don't need the university. You haven't got a province by turn 18 and that's because you have underestimated gold as the card that buys your provinces. Potions don't help you buy gold and provinces.

The soothsayers seemed to be very powerful, the game ended with only 2 golds left in the pile (the bots had 12 and 13, respectively), which makes me wonder why is almost everyone downplaying soothsayer here? could anyone explain?

You played game 5 much closer to how a two player game could be played and you got your reward. You still took too many terminals here and should have bought the second (or third) forager before your first silver and relied on faster card gaining, including tournament and advisor. Soothsayer was good for your opponents but it also allowed you to trash down to 4 copper and 1 curse at the end. Foragers can deal with a steady influx of single curses, especially with the soothsayer giving an extra draw. Mountebanks would have kept your deck messy and dysfunctional.

If you want something else to think about, consider that scheme-mountebank might bury a forager/university player by adding extra junk every turn. However scheme-mountebank might well lose to a treasure-mountebank player because the treasure player will just buy gold and provinces earlier.

[minovsky]

Can you explain what X_u, Y_u, Z_u, etc are? thx

Edit: I changed the names of the card variables, and gave a brief explanation. Is it easier to understand now? Feel free to ask again

got it thx! 

You played game 5 much closer to how a two player game could be played and you got your reward. You still took too many terminals here and should have bought the second (or third) forager before your first silver and relied on faster card gaining, including tournament and advisor. Soothsayer was good for your opponents but it also allowed you to trash down to 4 copper and 1 curse at the end. Foragers can deal with a steady influx of single curses, especially with the soothsayer giving an extra draw. Mountebanks would have kept your deck messy and dysfunctional.

no one really mentioned advisor before but I get your point, I will try putting couple of advisor in, and get the forager earlier. I am not too sure about how many tournament should I be aiming for though, I agree they are really useful at the beginning but once everyone starts greening it might be clogging up my deck right?
(Edit: wait I guess I can trash the tournament later on when they become less useful, is that reasonable?)

i didn't consider how soothsayer actually benefitted me before so that's very fair.

[DG]

In certain situations, tournaments can quickly become dead cards once your opponents have provinces. In this game though your opponents are not buying provinces quickly and the provinces might be lost in the big decks rather than be in hand. Advisors could be worth it but if your deck is too untidy they will become bad cards.