I played some odd games of Dominion today. The first was a clear Highway combo board, and yet due to some bad luck on the 2nd shuffle (I opened Nomad Camp/Silver, drew $7 turn 3 and $2 turn 4) I only managed to get two Highways before they piled out. Somehow still won, probably because all but one person also ended up with two, and the one with four had suboptimal midgame luck, while I made my deck work with what I had.
Second game was a Ghost Ship/IGG game with Oracle. I opened Crossroads/Ghost Ship (2/5), so did someone else, and we bought the same cards turns 2 and 3... then I proceeded to get smashed by every single attack that came, my two terminals (Ghost Ship and Oracle) collided literally every single shuffle for the rest of the game, missed some reshuffles or got discarded, I played the three Crossroads I ended up with a total of two times due to constantly drawing them uselessly, and other such things, and I didn't get another $5 until about the 3rd last turn, ending up managing to just about buy one Duchy in the entire game. He on the other hand bought many Bazaars, Crossroads and Oracles, kept drawing 1-2 Estates with each Crossroad despite not buying green until very late, and basically ran away with the game.
Third game was a really interesting one - it was a Tunnel game with Margrave, Cartographer, Oasis, Thief, Loan and Adventurer to activate your Tunnels, along with Spice Merchant for thinning, Village and... something else. Two people opened with Margrave, so me and one other player ended up opening Spice Merchant/Tunnel. He constantly had his Tunnel (later Tunnels) discarded by Margrave and Thief, while I had the one Gold I got during the 3rd shuffle stolen, then proceeded to never match up my Oases with either Tunnel, missed during Margrave turns and Thief never hit. I think he had about 7 or 8 gold by the time I got to play my first one. But from there, I got an Adventurer... which was one of the most powerful Adventurer boards I think I've ever played. Asides from all the other treasures in my deck having been trashed so I only had (3) golds, Adventurer was also able to activate Tunnels as it went, so it not only picked up three Golds but it also gave me two golds the first two times I played it, and more golds on later plays, which was pretty huge. It pulled me straight back into the game, and I managed to come second.
Three very strange games. I was the strongest player in the group, but the player on my right is pretty decent as well (he'd probably be around Iso level 25-30 I expect, while I'm around 30-35 IIRC), and was the player who was generally doing something similar to me but without terrible luck. I know there's the saying "you make your own shuffle luck" but there's not always much you can do, especially getting wrecked early in the game.
