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Shepherd

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Cave-o-sapien:

--- Quote from: faust on February 27, 2018, 01:30:26 am ---Looking at a sample game (where Shepherd loses to BMU, so it's probably subpar), there is once a hand that cannot even buy an Estate.

--- End quote ---

It seems like when I've played heavy-Shepherd games, it's not unusual to have one dead turn.

trivialknot:
I also tried playing around with Shepherd in the simulator, and came to the same conclusions as Polk5440.

It seems that in a BMU strategy, you want 2 Shepherds early on.  By playing the strategy against itself, I was able to improve it by going for Provinces earlier (when money in deck >= $13, compared to BMU's $18), and Duchies earlier (when provinces in supply >= 5, compared to BMU's 4).  The target density of Shepherds was best at 1/7, and you don't prioritize it over Gold, or even Duchy.

The BM+Shepherd strategy loses to BM+Smithy by about 45/50%, and wins against the pure Shepherd strategy (as described in OP) by 55/40%.  Presumably each strategy could be further optimized in response to the opponent's strategy.  This seems fairly close to me, and I can believe that pure Shepherd is viable with some support.

faust:
I played around with Baron/Shepherd. That one beats BM/Smithy rather handily (77% or something). Of course it's a quite strong synergy, but it shows that just a single terminal can help out the Shepherd deck a lot.

Aleimon Thimble:
I added your article to the Wiki. If you object to this, please let me know.

http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Shepherd#Strategy

Honkeyfresh:

--- Quote from: crj on February 21, 2018, 10:51:38 pm ---It feels remiss not to mention Tunnel when talking about Shepherd. And not to mention Inheritance when talking about Pasture.

But this bit bugs me considerably:

--- Quote from: faust on February 20, 2018, 06:37:34 am ---in order to get started, you want to make sure to always start with a Shepherd in hand. Assuming a 5 card starting hand, that means that 20% of your deck should be Shepherds.
--- End quote ---
It's simply not true that 20% of your deck being Shepherds means that if you draw 5 cards you're certain one will be a Shepherd. All you're certain of is that you'll average one Shepherd per five cards.

As an example, if you have twenty cards, four of which are Shepherds, you only have a 72% chance of drawing a Shepherd.

That's not just mathematical nitpicking; it seems to me it strikes at the heart of the viability of a Shepherd engine. Especially as a hand with multiple Shepherds is also undesirable.

--- End quote ---

 I just played a tunnel shephard game.  it was amazing.

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