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[teamrocketgrunt]

Disclaimer: For a while now, I have been wanting to regularly report on the scarce competitive games of Dominion I am playing. This was mostly inspired by the infrequent game reports of Singletee he wrote in Season 13 which I found a very cool, non-streaming way to let other people in on the league matches. I will quickly try to answer your most urgent questions.

"So are you just going to rip off Singletee's idea?" Yes. I would like to do something similar on a (kind of) regular basis. I would like to report on a complete set of games, highlighting the most interesting kingdom and going into a little less detail on the other games.

"Snappy title, Team Rocket geek, but why are you bothering me with this?" I would like to inspire some discussion and I hope to get some feedback. Often times after playing a board I am still not sure at all what the best way of approaching it was. And I am usually too lazy to play it over and over or try to find my way around a simulator. Discussion with others however is not just what I am left with, but also my favorite way to learn.

"TL;DR already. But are you sure this doesn't belong in another section"? Not at all. I took a break from the league this season to get comfortable with Adventures, but I couldn't completely stop playing competitive Dominion, so I am playing in Adam Horton's Survival Tournament, hosted on reddit. This first match report stems from that tournament, so I can't possibly post it in the "Season 15 Game Reports" thread. I plan to eventually play in the league again, but I would prefer these posts be standalone mostly due to their length. I am also actively seeking advice pretty much every time I post something, so the "Help" section might also be the best place for this. Please feel free to point me towards the right section if you think this does not belong here. I haven't been around long enough to be sure on my own.

==========

Dominion Survival Round 1C (vs. Saaket)

Highlight of the match (Game 1): Log

(Provinces/Estates)

Not the most spectacular board, but I think the most interesting game we played. It does look to me like Minion is supported by the flexibilty and the discard-for-benefit Hamlet offers. Artificer seems to be okay with Minions giving you a four-card-hand again after discarding. Then again, Artificer does not really like small hand size. I am not sure how that would have played out. Most other cards can be mixed in in moderation without killing your strategy. If both players go for the Minion engine with Cantrips such as Artificer and Treasury mixed in and use Hamlets for +buy, Swamp Hag seems like a pretty mean counter. Also, the Minion engine requires some trashing, so I figure I want two Swamp Hags, a Trading Post and as many of the Minions as I can grab. I am not fond of Lost City here. Farming Village and Hamlet can give you +actions to play a Smithy and your Swamp Hag and I think cycling through your deck with Minions, getting to Swamp Hag every time is more important, so you should pick up Minions first. Duplicate offers the chance to sidestep some Swamp Hag curses, but I would rather get it later and play it regularly then get it early and delay other stuff.

My opponent opens Duplicate/Silver. I am not fond of that (I think Duplicate is a possible consolation price on turn 3 or 4 if you miss $5), but I might be wrong. I do expect him to go for Swamp Hag as well, so I open Silver/Smithy to hit $5. Since I plan to buy a Trading Post I try to buy as little yellow cards as possible. One Silver might have been too much already, but I prefer it over Hamlet/Smithy.

Contrary to what I expected, my opponent does not go for a multibuy engine and sticks to buying Smithies for a while, using his Duplicate on Lost City and eventually Gold. At some point, he hops on the Swamp Hag train, but gets just one of them. I would qualify what he does as some sort of "engine-BM-hybrid" (saying those words should summon Awaclus). It does not fare that poorly, and if my opponent had not ignored Hamlet and stuck to one Province a turn, it might have been competitive. On turn 14, for instance, he spends $14 on a single Province.

I eventually win the game 34-24, but I know I played this badly. Minion and Trading Post without a crazy surplus of villages in my deck meant I had to repeatedly discard Trading Post or I had to make uncomfortable decisions when Trading Post showed up in a four-card-hand.

• Should I have invested more in Villages/Smithies to draw more and trash more often?
• Should I have delayed Swamp Hag?
• What do you make of Artificer in this kingdom?

Game 2: Log

(Provinces/Estates)

Throughout the game, I get pretty awesome draws, but I lose nonetheless because of a bad screw-up. I decide to open Scavenger/Silver, get a Count immediately and use Alms on trashing-turns with Count to at least pick up a Silver. I do this on turn 5, on turn 7 my deck looks like this:

1   Count
1   Scavenger
5   Copper
3   Silver
2   Estate

I draw Count/Gold/Silver/Silver/Copper and can now put back a Gold and still have 8. I give in to the temptation thinking I am second player and a Province buy will put the pressure on my opponent. At the end of turn 11, we're down to two Provinces in the supply, but my opponent has three Golds to my lone one. On turn 14 I am two points down and can now either double-duchy with Count or buy a Province. I look through the log (I probably miss something) and I am pretty sure my opponent has played all his Golds this shuffle. Since my deck is worse than my opponent's, I decide to go for the throat and get the penultimate Province before the reshuffle rather than two Duchies. Unfortunately, I either miscounted or overlooked something and my opponent has $6 (including a Gold) in hand and his Oracle draws him the Silver he needs.

Saaket wins 36-32.

Game 3: Log

(Provinces/Estates)

This one I think we both played poorly. I decide I want just 1 Goons (a second early is probably better), lots of Storytellers to play Goons every turn and with Goons in play, buy out all the Mystics (I later put Pathfinding on them on a turn where I hit $8 without Goons in play). Since I open 5-2, I take a Wine Merchant to get Goons as soon as possible. This works out nicely, the Storyteller thing takes a long time to yield any results, though. What I can't figure out is why my opponent goes for the Masterpiece overpay at least twice. He plays Smithy-BM with Hoard against my "engine", but in that deck, you don't want the money density per se to go up, but rather the Gold density, if you are getting attacked by Goons each turn, right?

I win the game 47-36.

Game 4: Log

(Colonies/Estates)

This looks like a really good Minion engine. Bonfire and Remake both trash super-fast, after that, you grab as many Minions as you can (get a Quarry, if you have to) and if you're in the lead, start milling stuff with Expand. I feel like my opponent is a bit too impatient to grab the VP and lets me have 7 of the Minions. Once he had lost the Minion split, he grabbed Golds and Platina and soon his Minions were doing more damage than good, since he could never chain them, really. I also felt like he was getting bad draws.

I am not playing this very cleanly (I think I trash too litte), but I win 52-35.

==========

As I said, I am very keen on your opinions. These boards might not hold the coolest kingdoms ever, but there are so many little decisions all over the place that make even the blandest of boards interesting compared to a lot of other existing board games. So let's talk about Dominion!

Also, I embrace feedback concerning readability and formatting in general. Thanks!

[-Stef-]

Game 1:

I'm not a big fan of the minions here. The engine around lost cities and smithies feels a lot stronger.
Trading Post is indeed an awkward trasher for minions, but it's great in a village-smithy draw engine. And the extra gaining with Artificer/Duplicate can make that deck go mad.
In your minion deck Artificers are basically just peddlers, which are really good in minion decks, except they cost $5 which is too stiff a competition for minion itself.

You're saying the discard-for-benefit of hamlet goes nice with minions, which certainly is true, but that doesn't make it better than don't-even-have-to-discard-for-benefit.
(Don't  buy hamlet over farming village on turn 4)

Still you play a lot better than your opponent so deserve the win. Skipping the trasher and buying a Province on turn 9 in a 19 turns game with a nasty attack is really really bad.


Game 2:
Well almost any plan can work out in games like this. I think your plays were decent, none of them I really disagree with.


Game 3: Storyteller is not a great card here. Sure, it's decent, but it isn't great. Storyteller only becomes great if the cards you draw with them generate significantly more than the 1$ you payed for drawing them. The upside here is off course you get to attack with your Goons. But the deck only really starts rocking once you get the pathfinding Mystics.
So buy the pathfinding on turn 8 (skipping the two points from goons is quite irrelevant) and get Mystics sooner. Maybe build towards 2 Mystics and 3 Storytellers, then just add more mystics. (instead of 5 storytellers and 0 mystics).


Game 4: Again you play a lot better but the execution can be improved upon. Your first $2 hand (turn 3) is a hard choice. You don't really want the courtyard in your deck once you get to minions, but probably in the short term it's going to help get a minion sooner. Then again, you don't need the early minions as badly as in other minion games, with remake-bonfire-quarry synergy just trashing more might be better.
Your second $2 hand (turn 5) you really should buy nothing. The courtyard is just going to get in the way. You can't remake it into something you want, and drawing it is going to prevent you from drawing your remake together with things you actually want to remake.