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[billdacat]

Somehow I won this, though I think I had no business doing so.  The log is hard for me to even look at, I think I botched so many plays.  Please critique and tear me a new one.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120226-215635-25c4aa63.html

[DStu]

Chapel feels of course always like must buy, but for BigMoney it is not that strong. Not sure how it is with BigMoney-Hoard. Outpost you also don't really want here.

I think here is maybe an engine in this set, Village-Smithy-Outpost-Hoard-Chapel might work, but without attack and just Outpost as +buy this is not guaranteed. Probably just BigMoney-Smithy-Hoard, and only buy Duchies with double Hoard or if you would also buy it without Hoard. Not sure how Cache works here, I wouldn't feast in it, but in Money-Smithy I would take it with $5. Not sure if that's also true wit Hoard on the board, maybe RoyalSeal is even better.

[jonts26]

Where to start?

1. Chapel is not very good in big money. Smithy makes a much better terminal.
2. Outpost? Really?
3. A second chapel? Really? Really?
4. You played hoard kinda poorly. Buying an estate or duchy early with 1 hoard is almost always a bad idea. 1 Gold + 1 VP is less average money value than a silver. What you need to aim for is either buying provinces with a hoard or playing 2-4 and buying lesser green cards.

All that said, you can sort of justify the chapel opening (but not the feast) if the plan was to mass hoards then start greening to gain massive golds. It might still be slower than smithy/BM though I'm not positive.

[Davio]

You took 20 turns to get 4 Provinces, this is much much longer than needed with something like Smithy on board.
BMU+Smithy gets there in ~15 turns. Adding Royal Seal shaves off half a turn.

Chapeling into a Hoard filled deck seems a bit convoluted for me, I doubt whether this beats the 14.6 turn barrier I've set for Smithy-RS with the default simbot.

[billdacat]

My thinking here, obviously disjointed/wrong, was I'd go Library/Smithy with the Outpost and pick up the 5th province when I needed to, but the odds of that collision happening are so low.  I think I was thrown off by the relatively bad 5s on this board and struggled to find a interaction instead of just going BM/Smithy.

The second chapel (which my opponent rightly questioned) was me thinking I had way too much cruft in my deck and needed to get it thin ASAP to be able to stay in the game.  I did chapel 3 out of the next 4 turns, so as to how effective this was, I'm not sure. 

Hoard I freaked out on a bit when my opponent picked up the Hoard.  Did way too much reacting to my opponent's decisions.  Still trying to figure out how I won this as my opponent played much better.  Turn 9 he could have bought a province instead of Chapeling out 2 coppers, but I don't see any other real misplays except for him buying the Duchy early with the Hoard, which appears to have slowed him down.

[DStu]

The sim seems to prefer Smithy/Hoard/RS

[DG]

The extra kingdom treasures make a strong smithy deck. There are no extra buys and the card gains from the hoard come too late for the chapel deck. It looks like a clear smithy+treasure kingdom on a 4/3 start.

[jonts26]

Also about the chapel: copper isn't a terrible card in Big Money. You'd still like to get rid of it but only if you can do so while keeping up your tempo (moneylender is the prime example). You may have trashed a lot from your 2 chapels, but you didn't actually get all that much benefit and you spent a lot of turns doing so.

[RisingJaguar]

Total aside, but Chapel/smithy opening while trying to get hoard ASAP isn't so bad either.  I do admit there's a lot of fluctuation as the collision of terminals is astronomical.  I've done test runs and have seen 4 provinces + 2ish duchies by T14, while also 4 provinces + 2ish duchies at T18. 

[Davio]

If you select only one player in Geronimoo's simulator it will play until it has 4 Provinces. This is a handy feature to test non-interactive kingdoms such as this. When I choose both Chapel and Smithy, I can't get the avg below 17, but I'm not really sure what you're trying to do exactly.

Also my Smithy/Hoard/RS bot can't get below my first attempt of 14.6.

But I'm not an expert at finetuning the sime like WW is.

[RisingJaguar]

These are probably luckier versions... but

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201202/27/game-20120227-121053-98914be0.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201202/27/game-20120227-122153-d2cbe5d6.html

The point is to trash early, while deck managing to get early $6s for a hoard or two.  Royal seal is a bonus.  I make a mistake on the second one by wasting a free turn.  I'm not saying it dominates or even beats smithy/hoard/RS, but its something to consider is all. 

But yeah, I don't know how to navigate well with sims.

[Cheese]

The best BM+Hoard bot over in the BM+X thread buys Duchies with one Hoard over Gold, and Estates with one Hoard over Silver. This is easily rationalizable because in a normal BM game you will never hit $1.5/card, there Estate+Gold is not only giving you points but increasing the overall quality of your deck.

Now with trashing...you could get over $1.5/card so maybe it would change, but Chapel is just so mediocre for BM...