Alms, Mission, Vineyard, Lighthouse, Native Village, Scrying Pool, Guide, Lookout, Masterpiece, City, Trading Post, Harem
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160929/log.0.1475127765304.txtI thought long and hard about this one. Straight Trading Post / BM seems good. But man, Scrying Pool.. and Vineyards -- always so tempting! But no +buy or gaining, weak trashing (unless you want Silvers, which SP doesn't), and no virtual economy. Doesn't feel like a Scrying Pool game. But Vineyards! Ugh.. I was torn. I thought about it for like 3 minutes before doing anything. I thought well, if I had 5/2 the choice would be easy -- open Trading Post / Silver (with the help of Alms) and call it a day. But on 4/3.. hmm.. Vineyards! Ok, so I opened Potion. I figured if I can just get some level 3 Cities (maybe piles on Scrying Pool and.. Cities?), I would be off to the races with Vineyards. Also if I get lucky, the SP attack will make them miss their TP, which would be pretty devastating. And in all honesty, the tie-breaker for me was that a Scrying Pool / City / Vineyards thing would just be more
fun than boring old TP/BM. And isn't that why we play -- to have fun? So that was my plan and I went with it. Go for Scrying Pool / City / Vineyards.
But then after my first turn, to my surprise they opened 5/2 with Trading Post. Hmm. Darn. Well, I'm sticking to my plan..
Game rolls on. Opponent only plays TP once by T9, which is pretty lucky for me. So there's that. But I am nonetheless questioning this whole Scrying Pool thing.
Change of plan! T8 -- I overpay for Masterpiece to get 5 Silvers. I'm already more thin than my opponent who opened with a Trading Post. I'm also effectively punting on the whole engine/Vineyards thing. So be it. I feel like I'm ahead at this point, and I never looked back (the score ended up being really close, but I feel I was in control the whole game).
Moral of the story: Always be willing to change your strategy mid-game, based on how the game evolves. And when you think an opening is right, but then think it's wrong, it can actually still have been right for reasons you didn't initially realize.