Rebuild in Non-Mirrors People have learned – pretty well, I think – how to play Rebuild mirrors by now, thanks in no small part to AI and SCSN’s
excellent article on the subject. Seriously, if you haven’t read that, go do it – while it doesn’t get you to 100% perfect Rebuild mirror play, it gets you, in my estimation, about 90% of the way there – really the best you can expect from an article which isn’t unreadably long. I hope to be able to do something similar for Rebuild in games which aren’t mirrors. Like all such strategic points, knowing how Rebuild goes in non-mirrors is what will allow you to determine whether or not to play a Rebuild strategy at all, so even though your opponents will
often mirror you, leading you to really need to know how to play mirrors, knowing how to play different strategies is important, too. And the fact of the matter is, especially with Rebuild, mirrors play a lot differently from non-mirrors. (Note: there’s actually yet another category of Rebuild game, where you use Rebuild in strategies other than the straightforward monolithic “Rebuild strategy”, but I think that requires yet-another-article).
The Rebuild Plan As has been said before (I think Tables might be the one I remember saying it first), the point of the game is not so much to score the most points before the game ends, but more to end the game whilst you have the most points. This is the mindset you need to get in as the Rebuild player. How do you do that? As a baseline, you’re looking to get half the points. When Big Money decks look to do this, that means 40 points past starting. But with Rebuild, you actually shift that number downwards with each play of the card. Point destruction is a huge tool. Another common win condition for the Rebuild player is to empty all the Provinces – again, you don’t actually need to
get all eight here, as you can destroy some. In either case, the name of the game is to play the actual card Rebuild as often as possible.
There are a few ways of going about this. The most straightforward is to get as many Rebuilds as you can. In the mirror, rule of thumb is to get two, then switch to duchies. That’s because you actually need points pretty quick, and the duchies are going to run out. But in the non-mirror, these tend to not really be a concern, so you will want to pile on more Rebuilds. You’re fine turning Province into Province for quite a while, and the extra points are not worth the extra plays of Rebuild over the course of the game – at least until fairly late. A very (very) rough rule of thumb here is to start thinking about picking up Duchy over Rebuild just after all your green cards are Provinces. The other way, of course, of playing your Rebuilds a lot, is by sifting through your decks to get them more. Warehouse-style cards are good here. I’d like to point out Oasis as a card that does both this and help you buy more Rebuilds.
I think it’s useful to look at where you want to be at the end of the game. When do you have them locked out? Five Provinces will (effectively) do it, considering five Duchies are gone. That takes 8 Rebuild plays and 2 Duchy buys. Four Provinces with two milled is just about as good – that takes 9 Rebuild plays but only one Duchy buy. If you need to empty the Provinces, that will take 11 Rebuild plays all-told (unless you get very lucky to spike buying one). These are the kinds of things you need to think about when deciding on the Duchy vs Rebuild question, because really, that will come down to how your draws have been, what your opponent is doing, and the game state at hand. One last thing I will mention is that toward the end, you can buy one cheaper victory card (or even multiples, as long as they’re the same name)
Playing Against Rebuild If you’ve determined you’re not going to play the monolithic Rebuild strategy, then you’ll want to know how to fight it. I want to start with the number one mistake I see players making in this situation, and that is buying duchies fairly early. That’s something you want to do against the Rebuild deck in a mirror, because Duchies are something you’ll want anyway, and denial can really be a thing. But in the non-mirror, it’s quite bad – Duchies won’t run out, they’ll hurt your deck a lot, and the points aren’t going to get you there. Since we’ve seen they’re looking to mill you out, even if you do lock out all the remaining duchies, it’s usually not a big deal. Okay, having said that, let’s move on to your actual game-plan. There are three main ways to try to beat that Rebuild strategy.
1. Be Super Fast Yourself If it takes 8-9 plays of Rebuild to lock you out, then if you can get to the point where you’re outscoring them before that, you’ll be in good shape. Now, they’re actually putting up a fairly quick clock in getting there, so this is not going to be a terribly common occurrence. But it will happen. Really fast engines can get there. But the surprise factor here is actually Big Money. You need a very sharp-and-quick Big Money deck to get there, but with a couple of good cards, it is indeed possible. At the very least, it’s something to keep in mind.
2. Stop or Slow Them From Their Plan It’s often thought that Rebuild is incredibly resilient to attacks; you can’t stop it. And it’s true, once they have their Rebuilds, it’s hard to disrupt that. But it isn’t impervious, and you really can slow them down. Discard attacks don’t stop them from playing Rebuild, but they really hurt their ability to get more. Junking attacks slow their ability to acquire Rebuilds and to play them. If that junk is curses, the points are going to add up as well – suddenly they do need to be buying more green cards. Trashing attacks can knock out the victory points, but mostly you would want to nail their Rebuilds. If you can do that reliably, it’s very nice.
I also want to note shelters here. Needing to turn OGE into Estate makes them need an extra play of Rebuild, and the need to buy more green cards slows them down a little bit as well. Of course, they can time their spots as optimally as possible, so this won’t be an amazingly huge difference, but you’re picking up a couple of turns against them, and that might well be enough to push you over the edge, if it was otherwise close.
3. Go over the top: They’re working on a 50% of the VP, point destruction theme. Using a source of points other than Province can really make their job much harder. They have to switch to run-the-provinces, which makes them need a few more plays of Rebuild. They can’t lock you out, so they need to end it fast enough for that to still be more points than your source. You on the flipside need a source that can still set up a good number of points fairly quickly, without needing to touch the Province stack. Sloggy kinds of VP are generally not very good for this – they just don’t set up their points fast enough.
Colony is a different story. It takes them three extra plays of Rebuild to get their original cards into Colonies plus any additional Duchy buys will take extra plays to turn into Colony as well. This is a significant slow-down. On the other hand, strong engines are usually only slowed a couple of turns to flip to Colony, so, in a relative sense, they gain a fair bit. The Rebuild player can potentially just try flipping to the “empty the Provinces” plan, but that is generally worse: it doesn’t really make them need fewer Rebuild plays, and it’s basically just worth fewer points. 2 Colonies and the last Province will overcome 4 provinces even, and merely 3 Colonies match up against 5 Provinces.
Vineyards and Goons can also provide a large enough points to make a fight against Rebuild, but they’re going to need a good amount of support. The problem Vineyards have is you tend to only be getting 1, maybe 2 a turn, which means by the time you switch to them, you need to have quite a number of actions already. Definitely doable, but needs support. And Goons, you will need a few multi-Goons turns, so you want to be able to set up an engine reasonably quickly to get that.
Example Games http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150329/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1427650528815.txt In this game, I power out lots of Rebuilds quickly, and then chomp down on Provinces. My last few turns I would not at all mind picking up a Duchy, but I’m not hitting $5 here. My opponent is just a couple too slow with a roaring engine which is just getting online.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150404/log.508ae4c20cf264ac914cc446.1428187198445.txtHere, my opponent uses Ambassador to junk my deck up, and Possession to capitalize on my Rebuilds. The problem is, it’s a bit slow. Key thing here is to name Estate at the right times, which ensures that Province trashing – if the game is going much longer, I will be sunk (which is also true if he can force me to Amb him a Province)
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150329/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1427642635257.txtHere, I use Scheme to get my Rebuilds to have good consistency. This is really important against my opponent, who is able to get a thin deck reasonably quickly – normally Knights would do a pretty good job of skewering me, but Scheme not only helps me play the Rebuilds more often, it protects them safely in my hand.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150313/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1426265509444.txtIn this game, my Rebuild-based plan get edged out by effectively Sea Hag into Embassy-Big Money. Note that my opponent actually gets out to a significant lead here by being faster, which really damages my get-a-lead-then-lock-out “Plan A”.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150316/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1426540995147.txtHere, I just edge out Mercenary-BM with my Rebuild plan.
