Yeah, treasure map is sometimes annoying and luck-based.
If there's no support cards at all, there's too low of a chance of drawing Treasure Maps together, and usually something else is faster. When there are support cards (Warehouse, Cellar, Tactician, Haven, Chapel, etc.) they're pretty likely to hit, but still have a pretty high chance of being very unlucky and not colliding soon enough.
There's an article on the forums about treasure map; it's pretty good.
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1385.msg23276#msg23276 . Also mentioned in
http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/02/04/the-worst-4-cards/ .
In your game, let me see... you had "Bishop, Colony, Farming Village, Fortune Teller, Great Hall, Haven, Jester, Minion, Platinum, Quarry, Steward, and Treasure Map". Yep, it has a good Treasure Map enabler - Haven. You can use it to save your Treasure Maps between hands. (Not to say it's necessarily the best thing around here, seems like Minions could work too, though you have to pick one or the other...)
Ah, yes, I see you went Minions and your opponent went Treasure Map/Steward/Haven.
...but, looking at the log, he never even had to use his Haven to pass the golds around, he just drew his two treasure maps together on turn 6 with the only support having been two cards trashed with steward, never even having to Haven them. And at that turn you didn't even have a Minion in your hand to ruin his day yet. Yeah, that's pretty lucky.
Hm. Them's the breaks. I probably would have gone Minions there too, all the while worrying about Treasure Maps actually being better because of Colony. You really need to get like 8 minions for Colonies...
...just checked, according to the simulator, I think it's pretty close. I wouldn't make much out of that, since I don't trust that my bots with colonies/plat were anywhere near optimized. But either way, it's close, and I assume that a turn 6 no-assist TM collision would put it firmly in the Treasure Map camp. Oh, and also with first-player advantage on his side.
The quarry also ended up never helping you, because whenever you played it you could have bought a Minion even if it was a copper. (You drew it in hands with zero estates early). Don't think I disagree with buying it, necessarily.
Might as well give some comments about how you played the game, let me see whether I can find stuff...
Hmm... okay, so somebody better than me can correct me, but I *think* that if going something like Minion-Steward, you should probably prioritize 'buying more Minions' ahead of trashing - if you have Steward, Copper, Copper, Copper, Estate, I'd probably think that getting More Minions is better. In a colony game, you really need quite a lot of Minions to consistently get the colonies - you probably want to get an 8-2 or 9-1 split if the other guy lets you because he's busy buying Non-Minion stuff. So on turns 4 and 8, I would have probably bought Minions. Maybe someone better than I on these boards can confirm or deny.
Also, I you definitely made mistakes on turns 4 and 13 by not buying anything at all. Even if you wanted to trash cards, you could have played the Minion and then bought a Haven; Havens are pretty nice. (When you have more than 5 and all you want is a Minion, Haven your best card for next turn, could have helped you a few times.) So that early turn-4 haven could have had a few pretty big effects down the line, if you drew it in any of the turns where you ended up with more coin than you wanted.
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Topic: I hate Treasure Map; is there anything I couldve done differently here? (Read 1370 times)