OK, time to talk about the things. I ran three session at U-Con and it turns out that people really don't like to go to 9AM sessions because it's too early. I'm up at like 5:30 every day so it was sleeping in for me, but I guess that makes me weird. Who knew? There was a small crowd at those early sessions, but the highlight for me was my advanced session on Saturday. We expanded the capacity for this sort of last-minute and ended up filling that. I got to talk to a lot of people about a lot of topics and it seemed pretty well-received. I think I want to make that happen again next year.
It was cool to meet F.DS people I had never met before, I don't often get the "you don't know me but I know you" thing from people watching my videos but it happened a couple of times and it made me feel much more important than I really am.
<3
So the tournament, I really wanted to take it down this year. I've made some deep runs before, but never really won anything on a larger scale before. I saw a crowd there when we were signing up that had a significant number of people that I not only knew, but knew they were quite good at Dominion. All right, bring it.
3: Platinum/Colony, Shelters, Crossroads, Bureaucrat, Feodum, Herald, Noble Brigand, Silk Road, Stables, Bank, Vineyard, Scrying Pool, Plan, Training
My first game with Liopoil and RR's mom. What do you do here? Well there are several options but they all seem worse when they're contested, so the most important thing to me was to stay flexible until each of us had committed to a particular strategy. The three strategies I had in mind were:
1. Mass Stables with maybe a Bank or a Training and Crossroads to stay viable
2. Scrying Pool with maybe a Bank or a Training and Crossroads to stay viable
3. Bureaucrat slog with Feodum, Noble Brigand, and probably some Crossroads there too
You can get some mileage out of Plan here with all three strategies.
Of these three, I actually think the third one isn't nearly as strong, Colonies are a lot of points and gaining enough Silvers to really compete is just going to take too long if your opponents play good decks. I figured Stables would be good in any deck I could build here so as first player I peed in a circle around the Stables pile and that seemed to work. Lio went for Scrying Pools and Alyce (I really hope I'm spelling that name right, it's much easier to just say it
) went for the slog.
Things did not go well for Adam while deck building here. I found myself drawing hands of four Coppers and an Estate while Lio's pools skipped three of my Stables. I also managed to get a starting hand of three Stables and two green cards, that was amazing. Lio won this convincingly and I took second, being two or three turns behind the whole way; YMYOSL. Would I do anything differently here? I don't think so, actually. I like the decisions I made for the most part, and the only thing I can think of is that maybe I should have played more conservatively and picked up a single Silver before getting Plan, but I'm not even sure that's right. It turns out that this is the only game I didn't win in the whole tournament, so I got that going for me, which is nice.
4: Duchess, Peasant, Secret Chamber, Chancellor, Fortune Teller, Remodel, Scout, Woodcutter, Counting House, King's Court, Seaway, Inheritance,
This is Elestan's troll kingdom. He's trying to trap people into inheriting Scouts (which is not actually good, for the record. I remember seeing some debate on this a while back but inheriting Scouts is just bad. Don't do it.) I played this one with EFHW and a lovely young woman whose name I don't think I ever learned.
So the only relevant cards on this board are Peasant, Remodel, and King's Court. The Dream™ is to get your Teacher and put the card token on King's Court, then King some Fugitives to draw your deck and King Remodels to get tons of green. Having nightmares about losing games to decks like this that I didn't think were better than Big Money, I went for this.
The nice thing about this strategy is that it looks a lot like Big Money with Remodel and Peasants for quite a while. You need several Silvers and several Golds here. And oh yeah there's really no way to reliably line all of your stuff up or even to thin or cycle to speed up your Teacher. I had my opening Traveller miss two shuffles so this took me FOREVER, but luckily I got like seven King's Courts, and luckily the turn I called my Teacher, I started with a hand of King, King, King, Fugitive, and something else. From this point I needed to call ADK over to help me track this nightmare of a turn that ended the game and emptied what was left of the green piles.
I play a King's Court, I draw a card, I have one tripled action left. I play King's Court, I draw a card, I have three tripled actions left and two pending card draws. I play King's Court, I draw a card, I have five tripled actions left and four pending card draws. Now I play Fugitive number one, draw two, discard one...
I won't go on. Elestan, I hope you're happy with yourself. This kingdom should never be played again
(this is the one I mentioned in the video)
5: Poor House, Fool's Gold, Gardens, Rats, Taxman, Thief, Contraband, Horn of Plenty, Hunting Party, Mandarin, Alms, Bonfire,
Elestan had been announcing which table to go to by player numbers, so we all kind of mozy on over to our table and see who we're playing. I walk up to this table and see Nick and Josh -- the other two Cincinnati people. We look at each other and we're all like "did this really just happen?"
So we uncover this board. I see a few things going on here, but only one good thing.
There's Hunting Party and Horn of Plenty, which is kind of a synergy--ish. Then there's the Mandarin/Horn trick that doesn't actually work because you need Contraband to hit $8 and that breaks the combo -- well you can just get a Duchy every turn instead of Province which seems pretty sad (and will still take a while to set up). Then there's Thief/Gardens with Alms to make it ridiculous. The other issue is that Thieves totally wreck the other strategies on this board, so not only is Thief/Gardens already bonkers-sauce with Alms, but nothing else can survive having Thieves played on you. So really I think there's just one thing to do here.
So Nick and I use Alms to open double Thief while Josh goes for one of the HP/Treasure things. The next couple of turns do not go well for Josh; he kindly buys me two Contrabands, a Horn, a Silver, and a Gold, while Nick and I trade Coppers and use Alms to pick up Gardens for the next six turns. Then, some ridiculous things start to happen. I get hands of 5 green cards (which is amazing here) and then I get -- wait for it -- a Province hand. My luck was ridiculous in this game, and Josh's was quite terrible.
6: Doctor, Wishing Well, Develop, Fortress, Artificer, Harvest, Haunted Woods, Highway, Merchant Guild, Forge, Traveling Fair, Expedition,
<3 this board. Big engine, big payload, lots of Develop tricks. I played this with nanaking and a guy I had seen around whose name I don't remember. Nanaking and I saw Develop and Wishing Well on this board, looked at each other and laughed because this was exactly the kind of board I had talked with her and grsbmd about earlier on the day at the advanced session.
So she goes first, straight-up outplays me for the first several turns of the game (I spaced on the fact that I could trash an Estate with Doctor overpay on my opening) but has slightly worse Doctor luck (still pretty good). She gets a Silver or two while I start piling Wishing Wells, but she's ahead on Highways. Through some good wishing, I think I narrow the gap a little bit when time starts to run low so we both green unnaturally early as a result instead of going for Haunted Woods next. I get one or two good turns with four Highways in play which would normally lead to some really interesting endgame decisions and delightful Artificer shenanigans, but running out of time gave me a huge advantage as last player and I won the game off of that.
So there was a tiebreaker game happening while I took the video at this point. Nanaking and grsbmd are in the video, but they're playing this board as I interrupt them to talk to the video. Grsbmd made the semis and nanaking didn't but she wanted to play this board with him to help him practice for the semifinals. I learned that they got married about the same time I did earlier this year; my wife and I sometimes get approached by people who ask if we're newlyweds, we say yes and then wonder how they know, and they tell us it's obvious; we are very confused by this, because to us being married feels basically the same as being engaged. After watching these two this weekend (and this moment in particular) I get it; you two are adorable <3
A: Ambassador, Silk Road, Trader, Pirate Ship, Procession, Cultist, Pillage, Vineyard, Scrying Pool, Familiar, Save, Scouting Party
This board has been talked about already so I won't go into too much detail, I played it with shark_bait and iguana. This was my first time playing shark_bait at this tournament in three years and he was undefeated up to this point, so suffice it to say I was a little bit intimidated. I like a Trader opening for sure, but nothing exists here without a counter to it so you have to pay attention very closesly to what your opponents are signaling and adapt quickly. I saw that I could just turtle up and go Trader/Save and the two of them would empty the Silver pile into my deck, so that worked out for me. I actually think I greened way too late but it didn't matter. I will say that I really like opening Trader and adjusting your second buy to what your see your opponents do (Ambassador or Scouting Party+Save to guarantee you draw your Trader T3 and make an Estate miss the shuffle).
I must say that shark_bait played this game very well, but I really like defense on this board. I'm still struggling with whether or not I should have picked up Cultists, I ended up not doing it but I still don't know if it was right.
C: Develop, Doctor, Market Square, Oracle, Armory, Bridge, Distant Lands, Band of Misfits, Nobles, Prince, Lost Arts, Pathfinding
I played this with Jordan and Liopoil. There are multiple options for payload here, but you want to make sure you have enough components if you're going for Bridges in any fashion so you have to pay attention to your opponents (notice a theme here?). We all open Doctor for $4, trashing an Estate, then Jordan gets a Silver and Lio and I both get Market Squares. Jordan does some light thinning, but sticks Lost Arts on Nobles and just tries to build up a money-based deck with that -- I believe this is a huge mistake on his part, by committing to something and not thinning more aggressively, he can't deny options to the other players, and while Lost Arts on terminal draw is certainly sexy, it's nothing compared to everything else that's here and he had very little flexibility at this point.
My Doctors go well enough and I'm able to get a couple of Golds with Market Squares and quickly Prince a Market Square. Lio gets terrible draws and is out of the game because his Doctor just can't hit. He's getting really frustrated and I feel terrible for him because I would be too; it's my game to lose at this point and Lio can't really do anything; did I play better than him? Absolutely not, he just got unlucky and I didn't -- it's this kind of thing that can leave a really bad taste in your mouth because of Doctor :-(
I grab a couple of BoMs and put Pathfinding on them, then a couple more and put Lost Arts on them, and there's nothing that Jordan and Liopoil can do quickly enough to stop me from ending the game in two turns (man, Cantrip Bridges are OP, they should do something about that
). I get 8 Bridges and 3 Market Squares in play and I do one of the greatest-feeling things you can do in all of Dominion: pick up the entire Province stack.
B: Shelters, Lookout, Smugglers, Watchtower, Spy, Ghost Ship, Tribute, Bridge Troll, Rogue, Hunting Grounds, Prince, Mission, Borrow
This one was really weird. I don't believe an engine is viable here unless the person to your left commits to getting good action density, so I'm watching Voltaire (to my left) very closely to try and get into his brain. He opens Lookout/Smugglers and I open Lookout/Watchtower (Nick is second player here and goes for Ghost Ship/Borrow+Silver, which pushed me towards Watchtower). Voltaire starts signaling Big Money after this and so I feel like my hand is forced: I'm going for Big Money too. At this point I think any hopes of an engine for anyone are toast, Nick doesn't even have a Lookout yet.
Voltaire manages to smuggle four Golds from me. I hate Smugglers. The Big Money-fest ensues and the game is over lightning-fast. I come close to getting last place here because I was third player, but Nick comes up just short and I'm able to get my fifth Province to seal it right afterward. I must say, there was a lot of finesse to this Big Money game and I think people really underestimate the significance of deck tracking in games like this. Do I have a Watchtower coming up? Has Nick seen his Ghost Ships? Maybe I should Borrow.
Final: Platinum/Colony, Shelters, Peasant (bane), Hermit, Scheme, Watchtower, Fortress, Transmogrify, Young Witch, Band of Misfits, Graverobber, Royal Carriage, Upgrade, Ferry, Summon
It's me versus grsbmd and Roadrunner here: this board was missing Upgrade when we first saw it and I thought it was super-interesting, then RR was like "shouldn't we have 11 kingdom cards?" and they brought over Upgrade and I was like "oh, well then it's just Upgrade/Fortress. Cool." Granted, there are directions the game can go from there, but certainly the most important thing in the world is to get 900 million Upgrades in your deck as quickly as possible.
I believe Young Witch has a place in the mid-to-late game here, but not knowing what my opponents were going to open with, I felt that Ferry/Upgrade was a better opening for me than Ferry/Hermit to gain more Upgrades because I really want to shuffle that Upgrade into my deck if I needed to get Peasants quick. Grsbmd did the Hermit thing and RR went straight for Upgrade (I think? I might not remember this correctly). My ambitions were rewarded when I hit the Golden Sombrero (hey at least I got two more Upgrades though) but at least no Young Witches were out. Through my sincere dedication I managed to get like 5 or 6 Upgrades which turned out to be key: my opponents left piles too low and I was able to find a forced win, getting a Duchy in the process. I won the game 3-0-0 and all of my dreams came true. But that was not the highlight of this game.
I'm sitting there TriHarding on my turns, trying to make sure I play cleanly, and Roadrunner is the master of the deadpan to my right. We're all like dying laughing at his witticisms. It was amazing. If this guy ever gets a streaming setup going and gets to stream Dominion, everyone needs to watch him. He's hilarious.
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Overall this weekend was amazing for me, I went there wanting one thing: to win this tournament, and I did it. I finally have something to hang my hat on and I will be going to GenCon next year to represent in that tournament (Indy and Cincinnati are right next door to each other). The F.DS crowd is getting larger and the IRL scene is growing for competitive Dominion. Every F.DSer I saw here is a wonderful, beautiful person and I can't wait to play more Dominion with you guys (shameless plug, you should all come to Cincinnati on 1/30/2016 for my tournament).
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Topic: Official Dominion Tournament at U-Con, Nov. 21 2015, Ypsilanti, MI, 2pm - 10pm (Read 74161 times)