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[Juice2403]

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150203/log.539fb259e4b0de4c2f3c49ea.1422990566528.txt

Check this out and see if I did anything wrong or great

[Polk5440]

What do you think about your play?

[Juice2403]

What do you think about your play?

I think I did ok except the fact that I'm thinking I didn't need double Jack here.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Your Haggler opening is great. The biggest thing you neglect is trashing. I would like a Lookout (maybe 2) sometime in the early game, turn 4 Lookout over Silver looks good to me. Lookout works well with Plaza here to guarantee you trash Coppers. Turn 11 I think you should buy Plaza not Jack.

You really want to get more Goons in play by getting more Plazas and trashing a lot more. Don't add so many Silvers or any Gold. I like your stack of Hunting Parties. Getting 4-5 Goons in play a couple times can easily outscore all the Provinces.

I don't know if this came up in your game as it's a bit difficult to dig out of a log, but you can really help your turns out by paying attention to the order you play your cards. For instance if you have Plaza/Goons in hand play them both before you play more Hunting Parties so that they can draw your second Goons.

[Juice2403]

Your Haggler opening is great. The biggest thing you neglect is trashing. I would like a Lookout (maybe 2) sometime in the early game, turn 4 Lookout over Silver looks good to me. Lookout works well with Plaza here to guarantee you trash Coppers. Turn 11 I think you should buy Plaza not Jack.

You really want to get more Goons in play by getting more Plazas and trashing a lot more. Don't add so many Silvers or any Gold. I like your stack of Hunting Parties. Getting 4-5 Goons in play a couple times can easily outscore all the Provinces.

I don't know if this came up in your game as it's a bit difficult to dig out of a log, but you can really help your turns out by paying attention to the order you play your cards. For instance if you have Plaza/Goons in hand play them both before you play more Hunting Parties so that they can draw your second Goons.

That makes a lot of sense, I thought that lookout wouldn't be that good to the fact I would draw a lot of cards due to Jack and getting rid of the cards via plaza by using them for coin tokens. But I do see the synergy and it makes it sense now that you explained it that way.

[qmech]

That makes a lot of sense, I thought that lookout wouldn't be that good to the fact I would draw a lot of cards due to Jack and getting rid of the cards via plaza by using them for coin tokens. But I do see the synergy and it makes it sense now that you explained it that way.

One problem with relying on Jack for draw is that the forced Silver gains make it harder and harder to draw the cards you want to see.  So even if you have one nice turn using Jack for draw, you're unlikely to have many more unless you have some way to get rid of the Silvers.

[Juice2403]

That makes a lot of sense, I thought that lookout wouldn't be that good to the fact I would draw a lot of cards due to Jack and getting rid of the cards via plaza by using them for coin tokens. But I do see the synergy and it makes it sense now that you explained it that way.

One problem with relying on Jack for draw is that the forced Silver gains make it harder and harder to draw the cards you want to see.  So even if you have one nice turn using Jack for draw, you're unlikely to have many more unless you have some way to get rid of the Silvers.

So pretty much you don't really rely on the money like silvers or gold once you get the engine going and you just worry about stacking the engine pieces together.

[Mic Qsenoch]

When you have an engine, money is bad. You don't want money. This is why JoaT is really really bad with an Engine.

I will tell you right now Juice, ignore this guy.

[Seprix]

Maybe you can explain why I'm wrong in thinking JoaT doesn't usually work in engines. I'd be happy to learn. And I'm not being sarcastic. I'm puzzling over this.

[JW]

Maybe you can explain why I'm wrong in thinking JoaT doesn't usually work in engines. I'd be happy to learn. And I'm not being sarcastic. I'm puzzling over this.

Adam has an enthusiastic article about Jack in an engine here: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=10755.0

[Juice2403]

Maybe you can explain why I'm wrong in thinking JoaT doesn't usually work in engines. I'd be happy to learn. And I'm not being sarcastic. I'm puzzling over this.

Because even though JoaT is money it helps this engine a lot because first you can trash unnecessary stuff via estates or whatever plus getting the chance to draw additional cards which is key for this deck. Especially when Goons is out there and you want to play it multiple turns to get victory points and it combos with plaza Good Synergy.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Maybe you can explain why I'm wrong in thinking JoaT doesn't usually work in engines. I'd be happy to learn. And I'm not being sarcastic. I'm puzzling over this.

Adam wrote an article about JoaT in an engine somewhere if you want to see some ideas related to that. The big thing to me is that replacing Estates with Silvers is a big deck quality shift that can help engines as well as money focused decks. It just lets you buy good cards. There are other tricks involving the draw to X aspect that I think are not so (generally) important, but possibly very important on a given board (Lookout/Plaza/Goons all support that aspect here).

I think the way worse thing is just saying "when you have an engine, money is bad." Having too many treasures is bad, but so is having too many Villages, or having too many non drawing terminals, or too many whatever. It could be anything. Exactly how much of any of these things your deck wants depends wildly on what you want your deck to do and what resources are available in the kingdom for drawing cards. So it's way better to look at a specific game, like this one, and say "you needed fewer treasures here" than to say "engines don't want money". Engines love money as long as they have a good use for it, like a bunch of buys, or expensive things to get. And engines can usually make way better use of their treasures than "big money" decks can. I lost a game against Stef in the championship match because I neglected my economy for too long, my engine needed more money.

People nag on Silver and treasures a lot because players often don't see that adding a Silver can actually make your deck worse (relative to adding nothing). But the real lesson isn't about treasures! It's usually about stop cards (anything that doesn't help you draw more cards). So people buy too many Candlestick Makers or Squires just because they have at least $2 and think they need to buy something. Even adding in cantrips over nothing can be bad. The point is just that the values of cards change throughout the game, the point is not "Silver sucks in engines".

[Juice2403]

Maybe you can explain why I'm wrong in thinking JoaT doesn't usually work in engines. I'd be happy to learn. And I'm not being sarcastic. I'm puzzling over this.

Adam wrote an article about JoaT in an engine somewhere if you want to see some ideas related to that. The big thing to me is that replacing Estates with Silvers is a big deck quality shift that can help engines as well as money focused decks. It just lets you buy good cards. There are other tricks involving the draw to X aspect that I think are not so (generally) important, but possibly very important on a given board (Lookout/Plaza/Goons all support that aspect here).

I think the way worse thing is just saying "when you have an engine, money is bad." Having too many treasures is bad, but so is having too many Villages, or having too many non drawing terminals, or too many whatever. It could be anything. Exactly how much of any of these things your deck wants depends wildly on what you want your deck to do and what resources are available in the kingdom for drawing cards. So it's way better to look at a specific game, like this one, and say "you needed fewer treasures here" than to say "engines don't want money". Engines love money as long as they have a good use for it, like a bunch of buys, or expensive things to get. And engines can usually make way better use of their treasures than "big money" decks can. I lost a game against Stef in the championship match because I neglected my economy for too long, my engine needed more money.

People nag on Silver and treasures a lot because players often don't see that adding a Silver can actually make your deck worse (relative to adding nothing). But the real lesson isn't about treasures! It's usually about stop cards (anything that doesn't help you draw more cards). So people buy too many Candlestick Makers or Squires just because they have at least $2 and think they need to buy something. Even adding in cantrips over nothing can be bad. The point is just that the values of cards change throughout the game, the point is not "Silver sucks in engines".

Wow very nicely said sir. I have a lot to learn still But I think I did ok on that board just besides the double jack and not buying Lookout.

[AdamH]

So yeah my article is relevant here and of course I'd highly recommend reading it.

My thoughts: So this is a Goons board...



The objective is to play as many Goons as possible; you've got Plaza to give you actions, and Hunting Party to help you draw cards, so you're aiming for multi-Goons turns. Note that these components will probably be contested so winning these splits could be important.

Jack is amazing for helping you with all of these things. You need to hit $6 early and often and Jack is great for that, even if you've been hit by a Goons.

Let's go over what Jack isn't amazing for here:

-Decreasing your deck size: Jack doesn't do this, and thinning is HWinning, so you're going to need a Lookout or two here. It's not super-SUPER-duper important because Hunting Party will help you out there, so it's just super-duper important.

-Drawing cards: what? Well yeah Jack does draw cards and it's especially great for drawing you out of a Goons-ed hand, but Jack is draw-up-to-5, and there are two problems with that. First, draw-up-to-X is pretty good but the lower X gets, the worse it is. 5 is not that great for building your whole deck around, so you need another source of draw. Second, decks that use draw-up-to-X as their only source of draw tend to only function well when they're very thin. This means you need strong trashing to make them happen and then they don't green very well. While you don't need green cards here (see above meme), Jack gives you a Silver every time you play it, which these kinds of decks almost never want to have. So while Jack is OK for drawing cards, it's going to stop being useful for that very quickly and you'll want to feed him to your Lookout before too long.

Certain types of engines want Silvers because that's the payload of the engine, others don't. It's easy to talk about Silver being good because once you understand Big Money you can see the value of it. Understanding Goons is much more difficult and complex, especially on boards like this where the path forward isn't super clear. You want some Silvers early but you want to regulate how many you get vs. other things that help you play Goons more.

On a 4/3 here I'd struggle between opening Jack/Lookout and Jack/Silver. I'd probably land on Jack/Lookout. On 5/2, Haggler/nothing is pretty clear.

[Burning Skull]

thinning is HWinning

Could somebody explain this joke to me please?

[AdamH]

"Thinning is Winning" is legitimate Dominion advice. The H comes from this scene. There are other parts of the episode where H is inserted into words that just have a W and no H.

On an unrelated note, HWinning is something my IRL gaming group says when someone currently has a points lead but has no chance of winning the game.

[Juice2403]

"Thinning is Winning" is legitimate Dominion advice. The H comes from this scene. There are other parts of the episode where H is inserted into words that just have a W and no H.

On an unrelated note, HWinning is something my IRL gaming group says when someone currently has a points lead but has no chance of winning the game.

Ha ha I saw this scene, very funny. But I get what you're saying and will understand this cleary when I come across something like this again.