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[JW]

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Crossroads, Loan, Urchin, Herald, Ironmonger, Island, Remake, Taxman, City, Laboratory
http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/static/logprettifier.html?20140815/log.516ce511e4b082c74d7a526a.1408163805327.txt

I played this perplexing game against Temron (Provinces/Estates). Though there are lots of great engine cards, there is no way to get extra gains/buys besides City with two piles empty (which is unlikely to happen).

In the game we both opened double-Urchin and didn’t collide on the next shuffle. I picked up Ironmonger-Urchin, while he picked up two more Urchins (passing up Ironmonger, which I felt had to be too many Urchins). Despite having four Urchins, he doesn’t collide on the next shuffle with three of his Urchins missing the shuffle. I am able to get and connect Mercenaries faster which puts me very far ahead on trashing; I get a City, some Heralds and then some money when my deck is thinned, and without multiple gains there is no way for him to come back.

Either double Urchin or Remake-Silver seems correct as an opening here, but I am not sure which. Remake likely prohibits adding Heralds later, but since you need to get coins from treasures it is hard to maintain the action density to keep Herald hitting consistently. Thoughts?

[ehunt]

very interesting board!

there is one "gainer" -- although a pretty terrible one -- namely taxman. in fact he doesn't look too bad on this board since, in addition to lacking a gainer, it doesn't have any money-producers except ironmonger, i.e. you need to buy money to get provinces. what about an urchin/taxman opening? This has almost as much chance of getting you a mercenary on the second shuffle as urchin/urchin*

(the only deck compositions where it fails but U-U would have worked on the second shuffle are

any-permutation-of(TXXXX)  U XXXXXX
or
XXXXX any-permutation-of(TXXXX) UX

i.e. when your urchin is card 6 or card 11 and your taxman is one of the preceding 5 cards... actually it looks like the odds of this are roughly (1/6)*(1/2) which is maybe still too high to risk)

[luser]

Looks that both of you got unlucky. Here most important question is how much does mercenary hurt opponent, engine potential here is relatively weak. It would win versus bigmoney but otherwise there is no payload.

Here for draw get laboratories, Herald and city here are meh as they act as unreliable lab and delayed lab. Extra actions are mostly useless here as only terminal is mercenary, Only other use of actions could be drawing golds from taxman.

A better engine here is get lab on 5, ironmonger on 4 and forget about heralds.

I am not sure what opening is best, I would probably try remake silver and on seoond gain urchin and remake estate into urchin and get second silver.

[JW]

there is one "gainer" -- although a pretty terrible one -- namely taxman. in fact he doesn't look too bad on this board since, in addition to lacking a gainer, it doesn't have any money-producers except ironmonger, i.e. you need to buy money to get provinces. what about an urchin/taxman opening? This has almost as much chance of getting you a mercenary on the second shuffle as urchin/urchin*

Urchin synergizes badly with Taxman (if you've already played Urchin the Taxman attack doesn't hurt them) and the gaining of Silver is not important compared to trashing your bad cards. Taxman competes with Mercenary as a (much weaker) terminal and a Taxman-Mercenary hand doesn't let you gain an important second Mercenary.

As you mention, the probability of getting a Mercenary on your second shuffle will be lower as well (45.5% with double-Urchin, http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=10550.0). Your logic seems right, I get that Urchin-Taxman is 1/6 * 5/11 lower to get Mercenary than Urchin-Taxman.

Adam H's league game is an example in which Taxman and Urchin don't mix well (the kingdom has + actions, but there were also non-treasure sources of coin):

Game 2: theblankman 33, AdamH 18
Game log     Twitch highlight     YouTube video
Kingdom Cards: Poor House, Urchin, Workshop, Envoy, Fortress, Taxman, Journeyman, Minion, Saboteur, Grand Market

Well this game comes down to who can collide their Urchins first. Fortunately we both miss on the first shuffle so at that point the playing field is relatively even. Unfortunately I buy Silvers and a Taxman and a Workshop while he picks up fortresses and Minions, and without surprise, his deck comes together more quickly.

Now there was a tiny bit of luck involved, since he didn't seem to hit $3, but I lost focus here...

[Jean-Michel]

Why not just skip the Urchin/Mercenary and go for Taxman-BM with 1 Taxman and some Ironmongers and Labs? Trashing does not seem worth it here, at least to me.
(Don't listen to me, I pretty much always go for a simple BM when it's not entirely clear what to do .)

[ehunt]

ah, I forgot that Taxman can't hurt when you have only 4 cards in hand.