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[funkdoc]

hello everyone, i've been thinking about making comparison threads to help us better gauge the strength of different cards/strategies.  this one occurred to me after a recent game where i tried the latter and got destroyed by the former.  this was with one of the $5 Smithy variants, Journeyman or Catacombs i think.

basically, i've heard Wandering Winder (IIRC) argue that any decent terminal draw-BM strat should beat a Minion stack if there's no other support for the Minions.  "support" in this case means other virtual coin or any trashing.  the argument is that your deck will choke on green in a hurry and you won't be able to play enough of those Minions for money, but now i'm not so sure.

i think in the BM seat, you may have to green even earlier than normal so the Minion player won't have time to get all 10 of them.  in the game i mentioned, my opponent got all 10 and hardly had a problem reaching $8.  that still sounds so sketchy though, and it really makes me question that advice.

any thoughts?

[traces Around]

Simulator work says:

Two Catacombses starting greening at 18 money in deck beats minion stack which starts greening at 6 minions in deck (both give highest win percentages against other) 64-31.

Two Journeymans starting greening at 18 money in deck beats minion stack which starts greening at 6 minions in deck (both give highest win percentages against other) 65-30.

30% is not 0%. Crap happens.

[Dingan]

I agree with the sim results and your gut instinct -- straight Minion with no support shouldn't be all that strong.  I do wonder, what the heck were you doing while your opponent was geting 10 Minions!?  Assuming that's maybe 14-18 turns, shouldn't that be well enough time for a decent BM deck to get a big head start on Provinces?

Completely unrelated, but regarding comparing decks.. I wonder if there are 3 decks such that deck A is better than deck B, deck B better than C, and C better than A.

[trivialknot]

Completely unrelated, but regarding comparing decks.. I wonder if there are 3 decks such that deck A is better than deck B, deck B better than C, and C better than A.

https://graphics.stanford.edu/~mdfisher/DominionAI.html#SimpleAndComplexKingdoms

[theJester]

So basically TerminalDraw-BM vs Minion-BM ? Minion is good, but not that good that it beats good BM strategy without support. I'd expect any of SmithyBM, JourneymanBM, WharfBM, CouncilRoomBM and CourtyardBM to comfortably beat unsupported Minions, and traces Around's simulator data seems to confirm this.

This is an old interested game: strong BM strategy with Courtyard/Hoard/Island/Harem against Minions with awesome support (Forager), and even then - these two seem to be more or less evenly matched: