Warning: this article is for beginning-to-intermediate Dominion players and has nothing new to offer you if you've been around the block a few times. I wrote it because I've noticed some newer folks on Goko don't have the knack of it quite yet.
We've all been there: you're all set up for a megaturn. You've trashed, you've got a good village/smithy engine going; you have +buy, cost reduction, but then, eh, you could use a little more. Your deck is set up to buy a province and a gold -- but with a few more bridges it might reliably triple province. So you use one more turn to buy a couple bridges. Wait, uh... that means there's only one bridge left. But as your opponent's turn starts, you notice there's also only one smithy and two villages. OK, that's fine... hopefully your opponent won't be able to buy them all, and ... uh-oh, that's the third bridge he's played... so 4 buys, well ok, but he can't buy them all and still buy points.... did he trash all his est---
How do you avoid this embarrassing loss, or, better, how do you make it happen to somebody else instead?
The obvious answer is, of course, you should be paying more attention to the piles. Fine, but why do good players seem to be able to pull a three-pile out of thin air?
This article is about tips in this direction.
1. It's not enough to know your own deck. You also have to know your opponent's. How many extra buys does she have? Whatever that number is, if she has plentiful money and you don't have points, you must leave at least two extra cards on the board. If you can't, you're unsafe (see tip 2 for what to do when unsafe). Does she have dangerous gainers, especially trash-for-benefit style gainers like Forge or Expand ? You often have to calculate these things carefully.
2. If you're unsafe, then sometimes you have to buy a province, even when your engine is incomplete. There's no hamlets left, only two grand markets and 3 smithies? It's tempting, with 12, to get those last two grand markets, but then your opponent only needs to snatch up three smithies and an estate for the win. Instead, you have to get a province, then maybe get a smithy and hope your opponent foolishly empties the grand market pile next turn instead of tying the score with you. This is game-theoretically very similar to the [often misquoted] "penultimate province rule" and similar exceptions apply.
The most important exception: if you're screwed (e.g. imagine your opponent has several highways and ALL the other grand markets, so she'd likely be able to get all these piles next turn and still enough green to beat you, and, even if not, she'll have a multi-province turn and your deck is set up for at most one a turn). In this case, you can go ahead and empty that grand market pile, not because it's likely a winning strategy, but for the 10% of the time that your opponent will have a dud turn next turn and you'll be able to sneak out a cheap win.
3. You should play an engine, if things are close, especially with 3+ players. If you aren't reliably playing +buy cards or gainers, you won't be able to control the ending of the game. A card like University is often a trap, and it's difficult to know when to go for it. As a tiebreaker, if a three-pile looks possible, you're going to be the one who has control over whether it happens or not, and University is great for that. Again, this is a tiebreaker. If there's no card draw, then it's probably just not an engine board. University is still a trap, and it doesn't matter if you have the ability to cause a three-pile ending if you won't be ahead when that ending happens.
4. You shouldn't try to three-pile in more than one turn if you are winning, assuming the reason you are winning is because you currently have a better deck than your opponent. This is a tempting and common mistake. You have 9 and four buys and are a couple provinces ahead. Hamlets and wharves are gone, and you played a wharf this turn, so next turn is probably going to be pretty good. You plan to buy four duchesses, then get the last three hopefully next turn -- even if not, you're way ahead, right? Usually, this is right. The problem is that, when you have terrible luck and wind up with 6 with 2 buys next turn, right after your opponent improbably has a starting hand with her ONLY two villages and wharves and double provinces, you will lose some games you didn't have to. (Worse -- after your opponent gets lucky and ties it up, you've sabotaged your deck with Duchesses -- so that now it's you that has to get lucky to have a chance of winning.) If your deck is better and you're in ahead on the province-buying phase, just keep buying green.
This rule is only if "you are winning because you have a better deck than your opponent." Sometimes, you are winning because your deck got set up faster than your opponent's, but your deck isn't better anymore. If you're drowning in green while he's bishopping golds, but you're still 20 points ahead, then by all means try to three-pile on cheap junk over the course of a few turns.
5. Just because two piles are empty doesn't mean a third will empty any time soon. The curses are gone in a witch game, and the two of you couldn't resist the temptation to empty the menagerie pile together during the sloggy mid-game instead of just buying silver like a decent person would. Are we in crisis mode? No. Don't be a bot. It depends on the other piles. If you think reaching 8 in the next century is hopeless, you might try for duchies, but if your opponent trashes curses slowly and doesn't help you empty the duchy pile, you may find yourself in a one-way slog.
6. Don't forget curses, estates, and ruins. With a bunch of +buy, you can empty these piles quickly. Estates are particularly nice in games with lots of +buy and money floating around, because emptying the estate pile and ending the game will cause you a win even if your opponent has a province and you don't. Of course, you lose a point per curse you buy.
7. You should know the specific cards that are often cause the game to end in three-piling. It would take too much space to list them all, but some of the most dangerous are here. In general, cheap cards that have little risk of hurting your deck are highly associated with three-piles, especially those with +buy on them. Cursers and Looters cause 3-piles because the curses or ruins are gone. In addition to these general principles, pay special attention to:
Stonemason: This is the worst, for a few separate reasons; first, it forces you to recalculate how many buys it takes to empty the pile for all piles, not just the stonemason pile itself. Speaking of the stonemason pile, 4 coin and 1 buy takes 3 stonemasons away from the stonemason pile. Also, if there are already stonemasons in your opponent's deck, he may be able to stonemason e.g. a gold into two farming villages.
Grand Market: Often players fight over the grand market deck until it is empty. This creates an unstable situation where a three-pile is highly likely. Even if you evenly split them, five grand markets and a little external source of buy and money is often enough to empty the estate pile, which results in a win even if the opponent already has a province.
Gainers and remodel variants: This is obvious, but don't forget to count these in with your opponent's +buys.
Hamlet: Everyone loves these things, they're cheap, and they give you the +buy you need to get lots of them. They almost invariably empty. Similarly for Fishing Village, which doesn't have a +buy but still usually finds itself getting emptied.
Bridge: This is especially true with more than two players. Not only is bridge itself popular, but it encourages more buying of cheap cantrips in the early game.
City: Again, this one's worse in multiplayer. Once two piles are empty, cities don't just get crazy good. They also get crazy good at helping you three-pile. And whoever's buying the cities is going to be making sure piles are getting empty.
Ill-Gotten Gains: Emptying the Ill-Gotten Gains pile empties two piles at once, putting the game in an immediate sort of overtime phase. These merit their own strategy article, which, fortunately, they have!
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Topic: pulling the rug out from under your opponents: 7 tips about 3-piling. (Read 9200 times)