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[Skandrino]

Hello everyone, I've been trying to get Hunting Party + terminal silver to work ( http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Combo:_Hunting_Party_and_terminal_silver ), and Hunting Party is supposed to be one of the best cards out there. But I can't seem to outperform other simple strategies!

For instance, see this game where I got 5 provinces in 17 turns: https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160323/log.0.1458743442541.txt

and compare it to this where I had 6 provinces in 16 turns with only cards from the base set: http://postimg.org/image/cnd9vkufn/

According to the wiki, simple smithy+BM gets 4/5 provinces and a few duchies in 14-16 turns, and any strategy that does worse than that is useless, so is Hunting Party+terminal silver actually useless, or what am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

[2.71828.....]

Well, you won both those games, so it is obviously not worthless.

What I would say is not to get too concerned with "I got X provinces in Y turns" but rather ask what the optimal strategy for a certain board is. The second game you posted you obviously went chapel/remodel and were able to get what you needed to win fairly quickly. Looks like the best strategy there.

The first game I would argue that your strategy was actually slightly suboptimal (ignoring tournament) but that the key card to your success was in fact hunting party  (5-1 split). So that game actually proves the opposite of your conjecture that HP+X is "useless."

Basically, play the whole board, not just seeing a particular combo and blinding yourself to all other cards.

[2.71828.....]

Because, yeah. That first game looks like HoP strategy for sure. Maybe not, but that is what I would go for

[Awaclus]

Hunting Party + terminal silver is not a very good strategy on its own. Hunting Party is a great card for other purposes, though.

Also,

What I would say is not to get too concerned with "I got X provinces in Y turns" but rather ask what the optimal strategy for a certain board is.

This. It doesn't matter if you got to 5 Provinces in 14 tuns because the game doesn't end when you have 5 Provinces nor does it end when it's turn 14. Your strategy should be able to end the game when you have more points than your opponent does, and "X Provinces in Y turns" only takes into account one of the aspects (your ability to gain points) and ignores the rest (your ability to have control over when the game ends, your opponent's ability to have control over when the game ends and your opponent's ability to gain points), so it's not really a very good way to evaluate strategies, other than pure BM against other pure BM because in those match-ups, both players have a similar (i.e. almost nonexistent) amount of pile control anyway.

[DG]

It seems that you played this kingdom: Cellar, Menagerie, Militia, Moneylender, Smithy, Tournament, Festival, Harvest, Horn of Plenty, Hunting Party, and were disappointed with speed at which you bought provinces using hunting parties, militia, and treasure. Firstly, you played militia 8 times in the last 14 turns, which is a big benefit. That makes it far better than smithy+silver. Secondly you can add cellars, tournament, moneylender, festival, and horn of plenty to the hunting party deck in this kingdom and make a very exciting deck. Those cards might not be present in every kingdom but there usually is something else productive.

It's also worth remembering that big money strategies are often not decisive. A better strategy might only notch up a 65%-35% win rate If you lose a game you might be seeing one of the 35%.

[werothegreat]

Remember that Smithy-BM gets 4 Provinces in 14 turns in a vacuum.  As DG noted, Militia in the kingdom will knock that down a peg.  Attacks can put a damper on a lot of strategies, Terminal Draw BM especially.  What makes Jack of all Trades so powerful is that it retains its strength even in the face of most Attacks.

[Skandrino]

Thanks a lot for your quick comments, that's very enlightening!!