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Author Topic: Hunting Grounds  (Read 55359 times)

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werothegreat

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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #75 on: March 24, 2015, 12:02:00 pm »
0

I think that if there is any information that is not learned upon studying the rules and basic play, it should be published, as insignificant as it is. Knowing Hunting Grounds is better than Smithy (even if it's obvious) should be pointed out, even if it's a couple of sentences.

The important part is that HG's betterness than Smithy is quantifiably higher than it might seem.

Also, added a line warning against BM/slog play for HG.
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #76 on: March 24, 2015, 12:51:38 pm »
+4

This is still a very awkward thread for me to read.

You can give harsh criticism without being rude.
Yes, that's a very good point. However, there is also another side. If people do provide you with feedback that is not burning you down completely, it's up to you to still do something with it.
And that is what is failing here.

So... any other thoughts on the new article?  Is it even worth trying to do an article on Hunting Grounds?  Or should I just wait another week for the previews so I can unload all the theorycrafting I've been mentally mulling over for the new cards?
Please, please, don't.

I guess that might be the problem with my thoughts on strategy - I tend to find more enjoyment thinking through what a particular card can do rather than sitting through endless games actually putting that card into practice.  I figured out Rats by sitting and thinking about it, not by playing so many games with Rats.  Maybe I was over (or under) thinking HG, maybe not every card needs an article.

Eh.
You did not figure out rats at all. You wrote an article on it, theory put it up on the main blog, and you put it on the wiki. I'm sorry, but that still doesn't make it any good. You never present any kingdom analysis, it always stops at card interactions. And you get the interactions all wrong; none of your "big three" actually belong in the top 3 cards to interact with rats (Remake, Watchtower, Vineyards/Butcher).


I like doing articles like this because I feel I'm a better writer than Dominion player, and posting these makes all the good players come out of the woodwork and tell me how wrong I am.
Here's a good thought - what you're doing here is part of a process that helps to get the knowledge out of some people that refuse to write about them and onto the forum / wiki.
However, that doesn't mean you should be the author of these articles. What you're doing now feels like you're in complete denial of what the leaderboard of dominion actually represents.
You're currently level 16. That implies there are very fundamental concepts about the game you're not grasping (yet). You writing an article and then changing some sentences based on feedback isn't really going to work. We (as in the community) have been working on it for 9 days now and it's still a bad article with lots of sentences in there that make absolutely zero sense. In fact, I'm going to stop providing feedback on it now and just try to write my own.
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werothegreat

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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #77 on: March 24, 2015, 01:12:11 pm »
+1

You're currently level 16. That implies there are very fundamental concepts about the game you're not grasping (yet).

Or it means that I don't play online very often.

You writing an article and then changing some sentences based on feedback isn't really going to work. We (as in the community) have been working on it for 9 days now and it's still a bad article with lots of sentences in there that make absolutely zero sense.

There seems to be some disagreement on that point.

In fact, I'm going to stop providing feedback on it now and just try to write my own.

Have a blast.
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #78 on: March 24, 2015, 01:34:24 pm »
+10


Engines
Hunting Grounds sheer drawing power makes it an excellent card for engines, and more specifically the kind of engines where you draw your entire deck every turn. If you think Hunting Grounds is only 4/3 better then a Smithy, you're not taking into account the village you need to play them. For example, in order to support 6 payload cards, you'd need 3 times village+smithy, but only 2 times village + hunting grounds, so that's 1.5 times better. If we replace the village by a Festival the Hunting Grounds is actually twice as good as Smithy.

There are many exceptions but you could start with these rules of thumb:
Festival + Moat -> You'll never draw your deck.
Village + Moat / Festival + Smithy -> requires superb trashing to start drawing your deck.
Village + Smithy / Festival + Hunting grounds -> requires light trashing to start drawing your deck.
Village + Hunting Grounds -> Requires no trashing at all to drawing your deck.

Payload
Drawing your deck every turn is off course great but only worthwhile if your deck also actually does something. As in every engine, you need some kind of payload. Hunting Grounds leaves you a lot more space in your deck though, and therefore you have options that you wouldn't have with other cards. Gold and even Silver could be the payload of your engine! This is a very nice recent example game between Seprix and Heisnberg, that you can also see on stream at 55:00. Would Hunting Grounds be any other draw card you'd certainly want some Bakers and Golds in your engine. But with Hunting Grounds the baker gets completely outclassed by the silvers Trader provides.

BigMoney
This is in general a bad plan. If you would play a 1-card kingdom with Hunting Grounds then sure you'd buy some. But if you add any other draw card it's better to buy a few of those and use your $6 hands for Gold. Gold can't cause terminal collision and even if you don't collide it's by no means guaranteed that the +4 cards will provide you with $3 . If you're playing with Colonies it's more reasonable because then the +4 cards could let you draw your platinum.

Trashing, Overbuilding
Hunting Grounds also has that sneaky on-trash ability that lets you gain 3 points, maybe even piling out estates. You should only trash your Hunting Grounds on your very last turn or when you're certain it's the winning move. If you can trash your own Hunting Grounds, you should generally build a little longer. In this game I've lost the Grand Market split 7 to 3, but by buying another bazaar+oracle in my next-to-last turn I set myself up for drawing Trading Post and 2 Hunting Grounds together for a sneaky 3 pile.
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #79 on: March 24, 2015, 01:45:39 pm »
+1

Okay.  If people like yours better than mine, I'll put it up on the wiki instead.
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #80 on: March 24, 2015, 01:58:34 pm »
0

Okay.  If people like yours better than mine, I'll put it up on the wiki instead.

I'm not that much into the wiki I must admit. I don't think what I just posted should be seen as final any more then what you wrote before it.

What I'm really interested in is a smoother path to get from "apparently a lot of people are willing to put some effort into it" to "hey, now we have a nice article on card X".
Preferably one where nobody gets insulted on the way. If anyone has some feedback for me on how I could contribute to that more/better, please do tell me - either here or by PM.
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #81 on: March 24, 2015, 02:16:42 pm »
+7

Okay.  If people like yours better than mine, I'll put it up on the wiki instead.

I'm not that much into the wiki I must admit. I don't think what I just posted should be seen as final any more then what you wrote before it.

What I'm really interested in is a smoother path to get from "apparently a lot of people are willing to put some effort into it" to "hey, now we have a nice article on card X".
Preferably one where nobody gets insulted on the way. If anyone has some feedback for me on how I could contribute to that more/better, please do tell me - either here or by PM.

Honestly, I find I spend more time on the wiki than playing Dominion.

Maybe instead of having articles (ostensibly) written by one person, we could have a sort of "card of the week" where we all discuss a card and give strategic advice about it, and someone compiles it into a coherent article.
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #82 on: March 24, 2015, 03:56:32 pm »
+1

The thing about Hunting Grounds that struck me most from this discussion is this comment of WanderingWinder:

A play pattern I often find in games with HG and Trash for Benefit is that you should very very often overbuild with extra Hunting Grounds as the game comes close to the end - it increases the reliability of your engine, and then when you get through your deck, the extra ones are payload and/or pile control.

(I'm sure others have said similar things too.)

This idea is present in Stef's article but not particularly prominently.

If you can trash your own Hunting Grounds, you should generally build a little longer.

I wonder if this sentence could be expanded a little. In fact looking again it seems as if Stef is talking about overbuilding generally while WW's point is about specifically overbuilding with more Hunting Grounds.

Other than that tiny point, Stef's article seems succinct and informative to me.

For context, this is from the point of view of a moderate player (around level 30 iso).


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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #83 on: March 24, 2015, 04:01:34 pm »
+4

This is mainly a vestige of dominionstrategy.com when it first came out and was somewhat of an alternative, as it were, to boardgamegeek.  Much of the early discussion about Dominion on BGG was pretty darn dismissive of the game and basically boiled down to "big money is unbeatable, Dominion is solved, Dominion is over-hyped" etc.

So as a real cadre of decent Dominion players emerged, thankfully Theory gave us a better alternative for discussion!

The front page had things like combo of the day, counter of the day, and specific card articles which at first were updated nearly daily.  So the attempts at individual card articles really point back to the early days of the site.  Thinking of the game more in toto is a a new level of play that the high ranking players have discovered in the evolution of the game.  Perhaps the time has come to stop individual card articles and move on to topical articles (e.g. general kingdom types that encourage going for Alt-VP, maximizing deck speed and game tempo in the early/mid/endgame)?

It is also certainly possible that the only way to really study Dominion at this point is individual case study, in which case stream highlights with commentary would be close to ideal.
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #84 on: March 24, 2015, 04:06:39 pm »
+1

Okay.  If people like yours better than mine, I'll put it up on the wiki instead.

I'm not that much into the wiki I must admit. I don't think what I just posted should be seen as final any more then what you wrote before it.

What I'm really interested in is a smoother path to get from "apparently a lot of people are willing to put some effort into it" to "hey, now we have a nice article on card X".
Preferably one where nobody gets insulted on the way. If anyone has some feedback for me on how I could contribute to that more/better, please do tell me - either here or by PM.

Honestly, I find I spend more time on the wiki than playing Dominion.

Maybe instead of having articles (ostensibly) written by one person, we could have a sort of "card of the week" where we all discuss a card and give strategic advice about it, and someone compiles it into a coherent article.

I have suggested this idea in the past and I still think it's a good idea.  Could even make it a prolonged, more thought-out version of the Qvist rankings, where justification must be presented for scores and debate must be had for the community to settle on a score/ranking for each card.  Scores aren't entirely meaningful, mind you, but they are fun to debate.
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werothegreat

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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #85 on: March 24, 2015, 05:25:58 pm »
+1

Okay.  Shall we consider Hunting Grounds to be our first topic?  I'd be more than happy to start the thread each week, but please, please, can someone else volunteer to do the write-up on this one?

It is also certainly possible that the only way to really study Dominion at this point is individual case study, in which case stream highlights with commentary would be close to ideal.

I don't think so.  There's certainly a place for looking at a specific game, but I think the point of the articles has always been (and should be) "what's so good/bad about this card?"
« Last Edit: March 24, 2015, 05:27:12 pm by werothegreat »
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #86 on: March 24, 2015, 06:20:12 pm »
+12

Guys, as someone new to the forums (I just signed up the other day to hopefully participate in League play), I loved this whole discussion!  I read the original article and thought to myself, "Huh, some of this sounds good, some sounds a little off, but what the heck do I know?"  I found the responses from MicQ, Stef, and WanderingWinder much more illuminating, but a REASON they were so illuminating is that they had something to respond to. 

A lot of times I think high level comments like Stef's write-up above are less accessible unless you are already quite good because the reasoning is not always obvious. Having them have something specific to respond to was pretty valuable for me to read.  Being able to give them a launching point from which to discuss the topic.  Let's be honest, the top players in Dominion just have a fuller understanding of the game than I do, and so hearing why they have a different take on something is valuable.   

I think it's possible that having people post analyses with the express purpose of having a high level player correct them might be very valuable, not just to that player, but the entire community.  It was for me in this case at least!  I think it could be done not just with cards, but with sample boards and openings, end game moves, etc. 

Rather than Stef posting an opening board and saying, "Think to yourself, what would you open on a 4/3, with a plan for what follow-up?" and then answering question in hidden text telling you what the right answer was, perhaps it would be more valuable for a random idiot like me (level 37 or so) to post an opening board and say, "Hmmmm, I think on a 4/3 you should open _____ with a follow up of _____" and then having WW, MicQ, SCSN, etc come tell me WHY I was wrong and what I maybe didn't consider. 
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #87 on: March 24, 2015, 07:11:06 pm »
+1

For example, in order to support 6 payload cards, you'd need 3 times village+smithy, but only 2 times village + hunting grounds, so that's 1.5 times better.

Why is this "in order to support 6 payload cards"? If you play Village + Hunting Grounds twice, you end up with 6 more cards in hand than you started with. But you start with 5 cards in hand so at that point you have 11 cards in hand.

I'd word it more like:
If you play 3 Villages and 3 Smithies, you increase hand size by 6 cards. Playing 2 Villages and 2 Hunting Grounds also increases hand size by 6 cards. So each pair of Village + Hunting Grounds is 1.5 times better at increasing hand size than Village + Smithy.
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #88 on: March 24, 2015, 07:22:13 pm »
+2

This is a very nice recent example game between Seprix and Heisnberg, that you can also see on stream at 55:00. Would Hunting Grounds be any other draw card you'd certainly want some Bakers and Golds in your engine. But with Hunting Grounds the baker gets completely outclassed by the silvers Trader provides.

Cool, you've quoted my game there. Due to Twitch being stupid, that link will disappear in 5 days. As a result of this, I am currently uploading a video onto YouTube to where I will give out the link once it is finished. Any video that educates anyone (including me) is something I highly support, and will make easier to access if possible.

EDIT:

Link is here. I believe watching this now that I have played the game somewhat suboptimal. I could have gained more HG where I gained Duchies, and bought more Foragers as well.
« Last Edit: March 24, 2015, 08:12:42 pm by Seprix »
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #89 on: March 24, 2015, 08:10:38 pm »
+4

Wero: I think your latest article is much better than the ones before it. I still think it's focusing too much on tangential aspects of the card and not enough on the straight card draw. The thing is, if I am a new player reading this article, I see myself seeing all those things as the important features of the card. And while those seem the most unique, the bulk of what the card does is draw four.

Stef: Your second sentence needs a 'probably', but that's minor. The next sentence, you want to put parentheses around village+smithy and village+hunting grounds, because right now, it can easily read as e.g. 2 villages but only 1 HG. But I'm actually more concerned about the substance of this section. I don't like couching it in terms of the number of villages - I want to relate it to the straight-up drawing power (though I will grant that there is potentially a point about villages, if in the kingdom that happens to be squeezed for +actions); at the very least, if you are going to explicitly mention the number of villages, you would also want to explicitly mention the number of draw cards. I also don't understand why you are assuming exactly 1 terminal in the group of payload. The big issue here, though, is that saying HG is 1.5 times as good as smithy and 2 times as good as it in the presence of Festival is HIGHLY misleading. The logic here would be that it takes 150% as many cards to do the same thing with smithies, 1.5 times as good. But that presumes that each card is equally easy to get, when this is very much not true. Moreover, 3xvillage+3xsmithy is actually just far better than 2xvillage+2xHG. Sure, if you get to play them all, it works out the same. But you're way, WAY more likely to dud with on the HGs. I also really dislike the rules of thumb in this section, because not only are there tons and tons of exceptions (to the point where I already wouldn't think it's worth mentioning), it's also incredibly vague and/or wrong. You can definitely draw your deck in the situations you say it's hard, it just takes longer (the first case, you need trashing, but if you can get down to fewer dead cards than you have in your starting hand, Festivals and Moats excluded, you can get there). What that means... well, it's entirely dependent on the kingdom. It definitely feels slower in those cases, but it's all a matter of degree, and slower in a vacuum means just nothing, because you are never in a vacuum. So the whole thing is actually pretty meaningless. I would like it much better if you just pointed how many cards you are netting out of each combination, e.g. Village+Moat => you have one more card in hand than when you started.
I don't understand why the payload section is there. It's not about Hunting Grounds. The only HG-centric point you make here is actually just a rehash of the same thing you said in the previous section.

Your last section, yes, you should very rarely trash HG before you're ending the game, but you are too strong here. There's the situation, at least, where you need the points or you'd surely lose on your opponent's next turn. Or the situation where you have a lean deck and Trash-for-benefit going on, but you desperately need more fuel, and trashing HG can give you that pretty efficiently. These are by no means common situations, but they're not nearly as rare as you're making it out. And they can definitely be good plays sometimes, even when they aren't certain to win.



Card of the Week might be interesting, and a good discussion to have, but I don't think it's a good way, in general, to write an article. You end up with tons of different little ideas hodge-podged in together, and lose the clarity and focus (and logical progression) which a single author gives.

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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #90 on: March 24, 2015, 10:01:00 pm »
0

Finally the discussion is getting to a place where I'm not afraid to chime in.  :)

It is also certainly possible that the only way to really study Dominion at this point is individual case study, in which case stream highlights with commentary would be close to ideal.

I don't think so.  There's certainly a place for looking at a specific game, but I think the point of the articles has always been (and should be) "what's so good/bad about this card?"

Of course I'm biased, because my main contribution to the community has been through video and live streams, but I think there's a ton of value in this kind of stuff. I know there's been value for me and I know several people have commented on my videos or messaged me saying how much they've learned from watching me. I've been toying with different ideas for different types of videos I could make, but that's another thread.

I'm not saying video is the only thing, but it certainly has its place for many people. Finding out new ways to have Dominion content might be something worth trying in the near future.
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #91 on: March 24, 2015, 11:29:35 pm »
0

Finally the discussion is getting to a place where I'm not afraid to chime in.  :)

You offend me. :)
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #92 on: March 25, 2015, 07:24:58 pm »
+8

My take:

Hunting Grounds



This is a card with a lot of little things going on. The most important thing about it, by far, though, is that the top of that text box lets you draw four cards (without penalty). This is the most powerful, relevant, overall the most significant ability of the card by far. Let’s break it down.


Level One: Big Money
One of the earliest strategies people often learn is Big Money/Draw: you get a very small number of a terminal draw card, lots of the most efficient treasure you can, provinces when you’re able. This strategy is, in general, not very flexible or resilient, which makes it not great. Hunting Grounds is actually even worse than normal though. Why? Well, there are a few reasons. The fourth card doesn’t do a ton here, since the turns you are drawing three are usually quite good anyway – similar to how Courtyard is better than Smithy in this kind of strategy. And drawing four means you can’t play as many Hunting Grounds as you would with other terminals. Finally, it costs 6, which not only makes you slower to get to it, but also means it’s competing with gold. Sure, the first Hunting Grounds is definitely better than the first Gold, so if you do end up in this strategy, take it. But the reason this is really a problem is that you are losing out on some of the upside of hitting 6 and effectively wasting your 4- and 5-coin hands, which is pretty bad in a big money strategy. Long story short, this is a better strategy than straight-up big money, but there will almost always be another action card on the board which is better for this than big money – and Hunting Grounds itself will tend to push you more towards engines. Which brings us to…


Level Two: Engines
Engines are generally pretty strong anyway, but Hunting Grounds accentuates this. The biggest reason is the sheer drawing power. In order to get your deck drawn, you simply need raw drawing power – the number of cards your deck can draw needs to be at least the number of actual cards in your deck (minus your starting hand-size). The typical rate on draw cards is that you get three and a bonus for a cost of 5 coins – Rabble, Catacombs, Journeyman, Margrave, Smithy (bonus is costing 4), etc etc. I want to stress , first and foremost, that Hunting Grounds is not all that different from those cards. If you play like you would for those, you won’t be that far off.
There are a few wrinkles though. Compared to those cards, this draws one more. In some sense, this is 4/3 as much raw power – however, practically speaking, it’s usually going to be more than that, since it takes a card slot in your deck itself (there’s also some consideration to the number of villages you’ll need being lessened with this, which can really be relevant if you’re pinched for +actions).  What can you do with more drawing power per draw card? Well, in some sense, there are two main options: You can either do the same amount with less of these, or you can get the same amount of these, and do more.

Let’s take these options in order. Having less of these would generally be beneficial because it would theoretically be faster to set up than the other draw cards. There are two problems with this: first, Hunting Grounds costs 6, which is going to make it a little bit tough to be much faster than the cheaper cards. Second, this Hunting Grounds-based deck is going to be a lot less reliable than the others. Not only are you missing out on the bonus those other cards give you beyond simply drawing 3 (a bonus which most often is going to help you be consistently drawing your draw cards, at least to some extent, which is what you need to do to draw your deck), but having fewer overall drawing cards makes it much more likely that you’re going to be missing out on one of those key components and have a ‘dud’ hand where your engine ‘misfires’ and you can’t draw your deck for a turn. So while sometimes you do want to go with les and be faster, you are more often going to want to just do more. What ‘doing more’ entails is going to vary wildly from kingdom to kingdom, but essentially it lets you have a more powerful and explosive late game, because you can load up on more payload. I will note that this doesn’t really solve the reliability issue. For that, you will probably need to build to overdraw, a bit more here than you would with most of your other draw cards. And in general, if there is other draw available in the kingdom, you are going to be mixing and matching, some Hunting Grounds for their raw power, some of the other draw for reliability and cheapness. And of course, you are going to want to build the engine essentially as normal, focusing on thinning and getting your draw up first and foremost. One of Hunting Grounds real strengths is to be added as the extra draw to an already-functioning engine, which simply needs more draw cards to keep up with any green or non-drawing payload.


Level Three: Tricks and Nuances
Honestly, the above really is the vast majority of what you want to do with the card. If you focus too much on fancy gimmicks and subtleties – like what I’m going to talk about below – while neglecting the basic bread-and-butter of draw-four, you’re doing yourself a disservice (if your goal is winning, anyway). Having said that, let’s dive in for an extra few percent, which can really make the difference at high levels.

Having some way to mitigate the potential reliability problems I discuss above is nice. Scheme can do this. Perhaps more straightforwardly, sifting cards like Cellar, Warehouse, and Inn can help to find your Hunting Grounds, and the Hunting Grounds’ sheer power can overcome the card which those cards leave you down. Alternatively, you can look to use flexible cards which can either draw for you if you need to find Hunting Grounds or be payload after you have drawn your deck. Those let you continue to build with somewhat less risk than having only a few draw cards while still having more oomph than you would get from buying lots of over-draw.

There’s this on-trash clause I haven’t mentioned yet. It doesn’t come up a lot. When it does, it’s almost always being used for trash-for-benefit, and it’s almost always being used at the end of the game. Turning a draw four into quite-bad-for-engines-green-cards is just not a deal you want to make earlier. Given that, it often won’t matter whether you get duchy or estates; when it does, it’s usually because you are emptying a pile. The on-trash “benefit” synergizes a bit with solving the consistency problem noted above – simply get some extra Hunting Grounds, perhaps without even the actions to play them all. You won’t need the last one or two, but they still give your engine reliability. And then at the end, you can cash them in for points. Certainly in engines with trashing, this is better than just buying duchy (except on the turn you’re ending the game), if you can spare the extra $1 and this doesn’t kill you on piles. Occasionally, you’ll get a very thin deck with trash-for-benefit cards where you’re a bit desperate for more fuel – Hunting Grounds can be your friend there. You can potentially try to use the trash ability as a source of points, perhaps with alternate VP, but in general, this isn’t a very good idea, because the decks that want this aren’t usually the same decks that want a draw 4. The on-trash can also be a drawback, if you for some reason need to trash this before the end of the game – Swindler maybe. Almost none of this stuff comes up much, though.

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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #93 on: March 25, 2015, 07:29:34 pm »
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I think Stefs was a bit better.
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XerxesPraelor

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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #94 on: March 25, 2015, 08:47:20 pm »
+1

I know WW's is a lot more understandable as a newbie, regardless of whether it's more correct.
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #95 on: March 25, 2015, 11:54:19 pm »
+1

Stef's is more succinct, but both offer good insight.  I think if I were a newer player I would prefer WW's although I think Stef's comparison of different village+draw combos is very useful food for thought for people deveolping.
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #96 on: March 26, 2015, 01:24:00 pm »
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How about this:

WW's is essentially saying what I eventually was trying to say, but better (with a few grammar/spelling bits I can fix on the wiki), and I think it would do well as an intro level article.  -Stef-, would you be willing to go *more* advanced with your article?  Kind of like how with Rebuild, my article is just basic "what Rebuild does", and then ragingduckd's goes into detail about mirror matches?  Then I would put both of yours up on the wiki.
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #97 on: March 26, 2015, 01:29:33 pm »
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Why not just put both up on the wiki and let the readers themselves decide?  I really like both and get slightly different flavors from them, which enhances my understanding of the card.
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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #98 on: March 27, 2015, 08:17:13 am »
+1

How about this:

WW's is essentially saying what I eventually was trying to say, but better (with a few grammar/spelling bits I can fix on the wiki), and I think it would do well as an intro level article.  -Stef-, would you be willing to go *more* advanced with your article?  Kind of like how with Rebuild, my article is just basic "what Rebuild does", and then ragingduckd's goes into detail about mirror matches?  Then I would put both of yours up on the wiki.

WW and I just have very different writing styles, and I don't necessarily think one of them should be classified as "more advanced" then the other.
Also I don't think I could really go deep into game analysis for Hunting Grounds a la Rebuild, because the card is far less dominating.
Rebuild mirrors all are kind of similar, but Hunting Grounds is a supportive card that can go into a wild variety of decks. If you want to say more, that should probably be about "deck drawing engines" but I don't think it should be in a Hunting Grounds article.

I will do some edits to my text, but not with the intention of making it "more advanced". I just haven't redacted it all that much yet (Usually I take at least a week between initial draft and actual post). Also some people provided feedback:

For example, in order to support 6 payload cards, you'd need 3 times village+smithy, but only 2 times village + hunting grounds, so that's 1.5 times better.

Why is this "in order to support 6 payload cards"? If you play Village + Hunting Grounds twice, you end up with 6 more cards in hand than you started with. But you start with 5 cards in hand so at that point you have 11 cards in hand.

I'd word it more like:
If you play 3 Villages and 3 Smithies, you increase hand size by 6 cards. Playing 2 Villages and 2 Hunting Grounds also increases hand size by 6 cards. So each pair of Village + Hunting Grounds is 1.5 times better at increasing hand size than Village + Smithy.
I wrote "in order to support 6 payload cards" because that's how I think about the game during the game. I don't buy draw cards or villages because I want them. I buy them because they allow me to play other cards. But maybe I should not mention that here - your text is cleaner in the sense that it tries to say only 1 thing in stead of 2 things at once, which I generally prefer.

...But I'm actually more concerned about the substance of this section. I don't like couching it in terms of the number of villages - I want to relate it to the straight-up drawing power (though I will grant that there is potentially a point about villages, if in the kingdom that happens to be squeezed for +actions); at the very least, if you are going to explicitly mention the number of villages, you would also want to explicitly mention the number of draw cards. I also don't understand why you are assuming exactly 1 terminal in the group of payload.
I don't understand your feedback which probably means my original text was too vague and misunderstood. I will rewrite it.

The big issue here, though, is that saying HG is 1.5 times as good as smithy and 2 times as good as it in the presence of Festival is HIGHLY misleading. The logic here would be that it takes 150% as many cards to do the same thing with smithies, 1.5 times as good. But that presumes that each card is equally easy to get, when this is very much not true. Moreover, 3xvillage+3xsmithy is actually just far better than 2xvillage+2xHG. Sure, if you get to play them all, it works out the same. But you're way, WAY more likely to dud with on the HGs.
Here we simply disagree. I think you still underestimate Hunting Grounds and stating it's much better then Smithy isn't misleading at all.

I also really dislike the rules of thumb in this section, because not only are there tons and tons of exceptions (to the point where I already wouldn't think it's worth mentioning), it's also incredibly vague and/or wrong. You can definitely draw your deck in the situations you say it's hard, it just takes longer (the first case, you need trashing, but if you can get down to fewer dead cards than you have in your starting hand, Festivals and Moats excluded, you can get there).
I don't know exactly what you're expecting after a paragraph starts with There are many exceptions but you could start with these rules of thumb:, but this is what you get.
I think they are very useful rules of thumb, just not for you as a lvl 50 player. And about the festival moat thing... yes in theory it's possible. I even was foolish enough to try and make it work sometimes. But I can't remember a single game where it actually worked. I do remember some of the (very rare) games where I made village + moat work.

I don't understand why the payload section is there. It's not about Hunting Grounds. The only HG-centric point you make here is actually just a rehash of the same thing you said in the previous section.
The payload section is there because it's what most people don't (fully) grasp, even on very high level.

Quote
Your last section, yes, you should very rarely trash HG before you're ending the game, but you are too strong here. There's the situation, at least, where you need the points or you'd surely lose on your opponent's next turn. Or the situation where you have a lean deck and Trash-for-benefit going on, but you desperately need more fuel, and trashing HG can give you that pretty efficiently. These are by no means common situations, but they're not nearly as rare as you're making it out. And they can definitely be good plays sometimes, even when they aren't certain to win.
I don't think it's too strong. Trashing your hunting grounds because you may lose on the next turn sounds like you're trading off a maybe loss on the next turn for a certain loss in a few turns. I know there are exceptions where you've already seen your opponents hand and then you just have to - but they're extremely rare and if you're good enough to realize it's happening now you probably also won't let a line in an article you read somewhere stop you.

Trashing your hunting grounds just because you need payload now is in theory possible. The $6 + duchy might come in handy, although probably only in kingdoms without +buy. I remember one game where I used that but can't find it now.
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Seprix

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Re: Hunting Grounds
« Reply #99 on: March 27, 2015, 09:28:28 am »
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If village moat is your only draw, in a vacuum, isn't it better to just go BM?
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