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[teamrocketgrunt]

Disclaimer: See my previous post.

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Preface: If you are not familiar with the format of Dominion Survival, here it is: There are two Swiss rounds each with four matches (Round 1A/B/C/D and Round 2A/B/C/D). In round 1, each win gives you 2 points, a tie 1 point and a loss 0 points. In the second round, those scores are doubled. After the first round, the bottom 14 participants were eliminated. After the second round, only 8 of the original 34 participants will be left and they will play single elimination rounds.

Last time, I reported about my games in round 1C, so technically we're missing round 1D, but my opponent never showed up, so I didn't get to play. I advanced to round 2 (I did get the free win for round 1D), and hopefully I'll have the full four matches to report on.

Today, I get to talk about a match-up I have been hoping for immediately after seeing the list of participants. I was paired with gkrieg13 who is playing in Division A right now. What a treat! But enough bootlicking, let's dive in.

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Video/Commentary:

The game was streamed via Infthitbox's Twitch channel, because Infthitbox provided commentary for our match.

Thank you, gkrieg, for the match and thank you, Infthitbox, for your commentary!

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Round 2A (vs. gkrieg)

Highlight of the Match (Game 2): Log

(Provinces/Shelters)

We did not get to play it out, unfortunately, but this might be the most messed up crazy board I have ever seen. Upgrade-Fortress is pretty crazy already (I learned that the hard way when Dan Brooks beat me up in Limetime's little tournament a while ago), but - won't you know it - Outpost and Mission are thrown in the mix. And Highway. Feast your eyes and imagine all the beautiful things you can do with this board in like 10 turns. I had completely amazing draws and my opponent didn't, so he resigned on turn 7 and we never got to see how I screwed up the endgame.

I have like a ton of questions, though.

- I opened Moneylender/Raze. Yes or no?
- Do you get all the Upgrades you can before buying Outpost? How much junk can be left in your deck, before you take the Outpost?
- Given the fact that your payload does not come from any treasures and you can upgrade your Fortress or maybe your Moneylender (once it's useless) into Outpost, how do you use Mission? Would you try to keep enough $ around to buy Mission and play Outpost on your Mission turn? Is that even allowed?
- I ignored Marauder. I think that's sensible. Is it?

Game 1: Log

(Provinces/Estates)

Not super-spectacular, but a pretty neat board. We both build an engine, he goes heavy on the Foragers, I don't. My Remodel/Forager opening might be terrible, I don't know. He opens Forager/Watchtower and has pretty good draws in the beginning I guess. I fall behind and I am actually not sure how I came back. With the abundance of Villages on the board (well I say abundance, but really, there's just two), Remodel with Watchtower in hand enables me to simulate a "no-benefit-Forager" and allows me to draw with Watchtower afterwards. That's neat, but this will never win a game for you. One mistake my opponent might have made is ignoring Caravan and using Tactician for draw. Sure, there are payload Cantrips and a lot of different treasures ended up in the trash, but Double-Tactician doesn't like beeing "spoiled". If you know what I mean. He sticks with one Tactician and has a pretty scary turn 12. After that, he has to sacrifice one turn again to play his single Tactician and a definite mistake he makes is taking the Province pile down to three on turn 13. Maybe he forgot about my Remodel, maybe he had to hope for a dud. What I still wonder about is Double-Tac with Death Cart and Forager. Once you clear out all of your junk and have a Tac in play, you can pretty safely purchase Death Carts and use the ruins as Forager food. Maybe this would have been better.

Game 3: Log

(Provinces/Shelters)

Kinda weird game. Royal Carriage and COTR make it interesting. Thanks, Adventures! My opponent has a pretty miserable 5/2 (I think he had pretty bad luck overall, actually) and I collide my opening buys (Urchin/Seahag) on turn 3. After that, I definitely go too hard for those Coins of the Realm and he outplays me. Knowing that this will secure the match, my deck - coughing and wheezing - scrambles for the tie.

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Please let me know how you would have approached these Kingdoms as I am not sure at all.

Also, I am playing dmet (another great opponent from the Dominion League) on Monday, I think. So there's going to be more game reports next week!

[Infthitbox]

A quick note about the video: the twitch link won't live forever; here's the youtube export: link

Game 1: I really think you can play double-Tac here. Between Market, Death Cart, and powered-up Foragers, the economy is there. You also don't need to totally clear out your treasures or eschew Bandit Camp because of Storyteller.

Game 2: This board is nuts, glad I didn't have to play it, rather just watch. Unfortunately, gkrieg was never really in this game. He opened Moneylender/Silver, which isn't as good as Moneylender/Raze, and his Moneylender misses the shuffle. You get going, and it would have been all downhill from there. He also buys Marauder??

Game 3: Surprised about the relative lack of Heralds in this game. A little disappointed honestly that you took the draw from that endgame position, the jockeying was shaping up in an interesting way, and in the absence of tournament-related mathematics, would have produced an interesting turn or two.

I apologize for the commentary: I got reports it got echoey, don't know what happened to my audio. Also, just in general about my commentary quality: first attempt at commentating someone else's match, and its not easy to do (particularly by yourself).