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[ednever]

This should be a full length article, but I thought I would dump some of the ideas here first.

My theory is that learning Dominion follows a few common paths:

1- No idea what you are doing
2- You know what you are doing (the basic principles)
3- You get better at the game in general and start being able to identify key 2-card combos
4- You get very good at the game and can see and build engines across multiple cards, you can recognize when a generally bad card is good and when a generally good card is bad
5- "What this post is about"
6- More stuff about about getting better and better at the game


"What this post is about"
It took me a while to get to #4. It took me even longer to understand #5, because I think it's pretty subtle. Basically the idea is:
(1) You see what the dominant strategy of a board is; but...
(2) Instead of diving right into that strategy, you do something else first that sets up that strategy

A very simple example is: "Wow. The dominant strategy of this board is 'Possession'" -> that doesn't mean you should open with Potion (Unless there is a University/Scrying Pool/Apothecary thing that facilitates that open)

But it obviously gets a lot more subtle than that.

I read a post about how sometimes you want to NOT open Young Witch (due to a spammable Bane), but then transition into YW later when the decks are a little more bloated.

Here is the game that happened this morning that inspired this post:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201209/06/game-20120906-085259-4dfcb9a9.html

The dominant strategy here is Horse Traders+Venture / Tunnel (Not perfect on a Colony board, but still dominant I think)
My opponent rightly saw the combo and opened HT+Tunnel

I saw the combo too, but made a slightly different choice.

I opened Steward/Island. The idea was the make my deck a little bit smaller and kill some coppers. I figured that would
(1) Make is slightly more likely the HT/Tunnels would collide
(2) Make it slightly less likely the Ventures would not hit copper

I figured I would have the time given it was a Colony game to play a bit more strategically.
I also didn't load up on Tunnels - I just needed enough gold to get me consistently to Platinum (A mistake I've made many times before - including an isodom match where I played Warehouse/Tunnel a little too heavily in a Colony match). Since the deck was a bit thinner, I also didn't need as many Tunnels to ensure collisions.


Again: Not a full article, but it's a discussion I don't think I've seen on this board before.

Discuss.

Ed

[D Bo]

I definitely feel like I'm in between three and four - many times I'm able to distinguish between the usual good cards in a bad situation, but I also have too many games lately where I don't set my strategy up because I fall in love with some 3 or 4 cost card that might be nice, but really doesn't further my middle or late game. Watching WanderingWinder's videos has helped me a lot with this too. I like to look at the board and guess what he's going to do, and of course, he typically goes really simple when I think of some huge engine chain that would never work, or vice versa and I'm left with a big money deck that runs out of steam.

[Qvist]

Not much to discuss, I think. I fully agree. I think I'm at #4 and having a hard time getting to #5.
I'm in the dilemma to often know the dominant strategy, but buying the key cards in a wrong order or ignoring some pretty good supporting cards.
What you discribe is basically #5 "Buying the key cards in the right order".
This reminds me of an article someone (I think it was WW) wrote, about knowing how you're deck looks like when the game ends or when you're about to get green.
I have less and less problems in that matter, but how to get there is still my main problem.

[clb]

I am not really qualified to comment on item 5 - I am still working on mastering 5 with lapses into 3.
I do have a question for you, though. With your Steward, you trashed 1 Copper and 1 Estate. You set aside 1 Estate with your Island. This is a net reduction of 2 cards (-3+1), only one of which was a copper. Do you feel that significantly aids your ventures? Does taking 2 turns to buy Steward and Island to remove three cards from your deck make sense? It seems that your deck contraction would not be significant enough to compensate for the lost turns. How would you feel about using 2 Stewards as the opening to your strategy? The +$2 option might offset the early buying power loss as the only cards you plan on buying cost $4, $3 and later $9, $11, $8 (that is, you aren't rushing for a $5, so losing some economy isn't heinous).

[mnavratil]

Also agree with clb. I think you'd have been better of either not getting the steward, or using it more aggressivley early. I think HT/Steward may be a better way to transition. Trash a lot, buy a single Tunnel and then gain gold like mad.

I played this board solo by setting up an engine with Menagerie/Shanty Town/HT/Tunnel. Open steward/menagerie. Trash aggressively getting one HT along the way. When your deck is slimmed buy a tunnel and build back up to gold with tunnel/HT. Use extra buys on Menagerie/Shanty Town/Horse Traders. I have no idea if this is the best you can do on this board, but I think is better than the straight HT/Venture route.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Not 100% on topic, but I would have thought an Outpost/Menagerie strategy would be the way to go here with Steward to trash all the early junk cards and Horse Traders for +buy and to discard the Colonies too keep the Menageries going.

EDIT: Attempt: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201209/06/game-20120906-151828-3b8a94a3.html
If I'm counting right, I get 6 Colonies in 16 non-Outpost turns.

[aaron0013]

I am definitely on the verge of #5!  Just in the last few games I have started recognising faults of mine during the first few turns.  YOU IDIOT! WHY DID YOU BUY A POTION ON TURN 1 WHEN GOING FOR POSSESSIONS?

Thanks for the great post. You have expanded my horizons

[sitnaltax]

HiveMindEmulator's strategy is impressive and definitely not the one I would have thought of.

I think I would have gone Steward/Shanty Town or possibly Steward/Silver. HT/Tunnel looks strong and the coppers are in the way. I think the prospect of Venture/Tunnel hitting is overblown, especially with only the mediocre Copper trashing. (Not that Venture is awful on this board, if you're gaining lots of valuable treasure with Tunnel, but not worth fixating on, and I would prefer another HT on his Turn 3.)

I'd also like to suggest that if Alistair (the opponent) here had connected the HT and Tunnel on T3/4 and everything else had gone more or less the same, he would have cruised to an easy victory and you'd be wondering why you overthought the board so much. If it had missed the first time but hit on T5/6, it would have been closer.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I'd also like to suggest that if Alistair (the opponent) here had connected the HT and Tunnel on T3/4 and everything else had gone more or less the same, he would have cruised to an easy victory and you'd be wondering why you overthought the board so much. If it had missed the first time but hit on T5/6, it would have been closer.

Well, lining up HT with Tunnel on turn 3/4 is a 1/3 shot, which is not great. So it's more likely to fail and turn out terribly than it is to succeed.

I just want to state for the record that HT/Tunnel is not the basis of a real strategy in most cases. Without good drawing, you're not likely enough to line it up, and with good drawing, you can probably do something better than buying an early victory card and slowly adding a bunch of Golds to your deck. I would not at all be surprised if it were an underdog strategy to Smithy+money.

The way I read this board is that it's a Colony game, so you want to build a draw engine. What's the best draw engine card on the board? Menagerie. As long as there's a a way to trash the starting cards. Steward. Check. Now I have the basis of a strategy: Menagerie draw engine with a Steward opening. So what else can help this? Outpost gives extra turns, and is a perfect combo with Menagerie (identifying this probably qualifies as "level 3" for the combo or "level 4" for using Outpost!). Horse Traders gives discard and buy, and Shanty Town gives actions to play them, and in the likely event that you don't have HT or outpost in your hand, it's a level 2 City. Maybe the "level 5" part of the strategy is recognizing that getting a couple early game Shanty Towns and even throwing in the Venture on 5 helps quite a bit.

[dondon151]

Quite odd that Iso doesn't properly designate Outpost turns in solitaire games.

Venture/HT/Tunnel with a Steward/Silver opening does fairly well, but I think that an engine that gets 2 Colonies every turn and doesn't really choke is definitely the winner here.

[clb]

For me, paying $15 for a Horse Traders (HME's solitaire turn 14  - P, 2G, C, V, S) is a very hard thing to do. I am comfortable (finally) paying $1, $2, or $3 too much for a card, but overpaying by $11? That takes a lot of presence of mind to know that it will pay off in the long run.

[greatexpectations]

So what else can help this? Outpost gives extra turns, and is a perfect combo with Menagerie (identifying this probably qualifies as "level 3" for the combo or "level 4" for using Outpost!).

i would guess that outpost can also play well in venture decks with trashing.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Quite odd that Iso doesn't properly designate Outpost turns in solitaire games.

Venture/HT/Tunnel with a Steward/Silver opening does fairly well, but I think that an engine that gets 2 Colonies every turn and doesn't really choke is definitely the winner here.

Technically, it's correct. This was discussed somewhere before. Outpost can't cause you to have more than 2 consecutive turns. In solitaire, since you have no opponents, all your turns are consecutive.

For me, paying $15 for a Horse Traders (HME's solitaire turn 14  - P, 2G, C, V, S) is a very hard thing to do. I am comfortable (finally) paying $1, $2, or $3 too much for a card, but overpaying by $11? That takes a lot of presence of mind to know that it will pay off in the long run.

I'll pay anything for +buy. You can either overpay $11 now or overpay by $4 every turn for the rest of the game since you don't have a +buy to spend all your money.