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[vishwathg]

EDIT: Wait this should go here right?

I'm new to this site, so sorry if I do anything wrong...

I wanted to ask about a friendly game I played yesterday.

Kingdom Cards: Native Village, Lookout, Explorer, Island, Ambassador, Sea Hag, Ghost Ship, Fishing Village, Outpost, Wharf

Final Score:

Opponent 1 - 14
Me - 13
Opponent 2 - 10

The game ended on a three-pile ending (Curse, Island, and Native Village)

Rough outline of the game:

In the beginning, we just did the normal stuff; getting Silvers, and a few useful action cards (I got an Island, a Wharf, a couple Native Villages, and managed to get a Gold). In addition, my Wharf managed to get stuck on my Native Village mat for a couple turns. Around turn 6, though, Opponent 1 got the first Sea Hag, and proceeded to give us Curses over the next few turns. Seeing this, we all got a couple Ambassadors and started showering each other with Curses, while slowly buying Islands to store our Estates. Also, we bought Native Villages with our $2 turns. I also got a Lookout to try to counter the Sea Hag. At about the fifteenth turn, we all noticed there were only a couple Curses, Islands, and Native Villages left. We panicked and started buying Victory cards, including Islands, with all our turns. Opponent 1 also managed to get the only Province of the game. The game ended a couple turns later with Opponent 1 buying the last Native Village.

As I am only a novice at strategy, I don't think I could provide any useful insight, but here goes.

I noticed there was only 1 Action card that gave coins, and it only gave $1, so I tried to focus on Treasures, but because I could not draw many cards (my max handsize during this game was 7) and since the Curses did not allow for consolidation of my Treasures once Opponent 1 started giving them out, I was never able to get $6 or more after that first Gold. As a result, I was not able to get enough Treasures. I focused on getting Curses out of my deck, but they just kept coming until the Curse pile emptied, only one turn before the game ended.

Would there have been any better way to play with this Kingdom? I look forward to more experienced players' insight. Thanks!

[JW]

The key to this board is getting rid of all of your starting cards with Ambassador as early as possible. So open 2 Ambassadors. Then combine Fishing Village, Wharf, one Outpost and one Ghost Ship for a very powerful deck.

[Jack Rudd]

I wouldn't consider getting Silvers on this board until the Fishing Villages were gone, and maybe not even then.

[luser]

While double amb is correct opening its 3 player game so you couldn't get thin with ambassadors if others also open ambassador. Fishing villages will soon be gone and if you get 4 then you are happy that you won a split. getting vp lead will be problem with piles nearly empty and danger to ambassador ambassador to pile out remaining 4 ambs

[jonaskoelker]

What everyone else is saying about Ambassador is true. In general, you want Ambassador on almost all boards where it shows up. Opening 2xAmbassador is very often right, probably even more so in 3-player games.

I noticed there was only 1 Action card that gave coins, and it only gave $1, so I tried to focus on Treasures.

I don't think the (near-)absence of actions that give money is a good reason to play a treasure-focused strategy.

On the 4-card kingdom Chapel, Village, Smithy, Margrave, I think the right strategy is to trash your starting cards, get 2xSilver and 4xGold ($16 in total), enough Smithies plus a single Margrave to draw all your treasures and enough Villages to play all your Smithies and your Margrave. (Not in exactly that order.) Once that is up and running, buy 2xProvince every turn.

A treasure-centric strategy that discards down to 3 cards each turn has to have Gold+Gold+Silver (or 3xGold) to buy province, which means they have to have a lot of Gold for that to connect in a single hand, if they don't trash their starting cards.

On a kingdom of Chapel, Village, Council Room, Militia, you play basically the same strategy: trash your starters, get $16 in total money from one Militia plus treasures; get enough Council Rooms to draw everything, and enough Villages to play all your actions. The fact that Militia provides money doesn't really alter much: what's important about Militia is the attack, not the money.

On the two-card kingdom of Village and Militia, I would get a few Militias, enough to play them reasonably often, and then as many Silvers and Golds as I can get. Playing 2xMilitia on one turn has the same effect as Militia+Silver, but the latter doesn't require a Village, so by not buying Village you have money and buys you can spend on Silver (or better). The point: just because Militia is an action that provides money doesn't mean that you should get lots of them.

Here's an example game where the only +$ from actions is Market and the action-dense strategy only has 2 of them, and still wins.

[Chase Adolphson]

The key to this board is getting rid of all of your starting cards with Ambassador as early as possible. So open 2 Ambassadors. Then combine Fishing Village, Wharf, one Outpost and one Ghost Ship for a very powerful deck.

I think that if ambassador is in the game you should always open with it to get rid of your starting cards, and to give them crap.

[cascadestyler]

I'd echo the claims about the importance of Ambassador here, but think that the answers so far have overlooked the power of Lookout. I'd open Lookout/Ambassador then try to slide into a Fishing Village / Wharf engine with Gold (but but too much as the game will always be junky, one Ghost Ship, and an maybe an extra Ambassador later if one can't deal with all the junk you're getting.