Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[blueblimp]

How fast can a pure Menagerie kingdom buy out all the Provinces? I'm reasonably confident it's possible in 6 turns, maybe even in 5. I haven't worked out the details, but getting the key ideas is the fun part.

You're allowed kingdoms that Dominion Online allows (meaning up to 4 landscapes).

Here's my idea:

The optimistic plan:

Turn 1: Buy Stampede.
Turn 2: Play the Horses using Way of the Chameleon. Buy Populate. Because of Cavalry, clean-up triggers a reshuffle.
Turn 3: Buy 2 Populates.
Turn 4: Buy 4 Populates.
Turn 5: Buy all Provinces.

I'm not sure buying 2 Populates on turn 3 is actually possible, so maybe it takes 6 turns to do it. Shouldn't take longer than that though.

The 10 action cards (tentative):
Wayfarer, Livery, Displace, Barge, Hunting Lodge, Hostelry, Village Green, Animal Fair, Scrap, Cavalry

Include also Way of the Horse.

On Dominion Online, I used these action cards (except Cavalry was Supplies) to try exponential growth of Populate later in the game. So either this works as-is or should work with some tweaking.

[faust]

You can win in 3 turns. Not sure about buying all the Provinces, though I am reasonably confident it can be done.

Kingdom: Stockpile/Cavalry // Stampede, Gamble, Desperation, Way of the Sheep.

Turn 1: Buy Stockpile
Turn 2: Buy Desperation/Stampede
Turn 3: Draw 10 cards, buy Cavalry for remaining 2 cards, deck and discard are empty, Coppers and Stockpile played.
You have $6 and 2 buys. Buy Stockpile, discarding stockpile from exile. Buy Gamble*3, playing Stockpile, Stockpile, Cavalry as Sheep. You now have $5 and 4 buys. Buy Stockpile, and Gambles, and continue until the Stockpiles are all in Exile. You end up with enough $ (I think 33) and buys to empty Estates, Curses, and buy a Province.

EDIT:

I tried to make the buy all Provinces thing work, it might not quite be enough. However it would definitely work if I could fit in Commerce, as Commerce/Gamble is a way to increase your $. This increases the turn count by 1, as you can only buy Stampede on turn 3.

[Titandrake]

I got a turn 4 Province empty in game #45234451, which I've having trouble reloading for some reason.

I went for:

Stockpile, Cavalry, Hostelry, Village Green, Coven, Hunting Lodge, Livery, Destrier, Wayfarer, Animal Fair
Stampede, Populate, Way of the Chameleon, Gamble


It's poorly maxed, but the idea is that you get Stampede turn 1, you spend turn 2 and 3 trying to setup for Stockpile-Gamble, then on turn 4 you go for it. With some luck, I got Stockpile-Gamble set up, emptied Stockpiles to get to about $30 with 30 buys, emptied Destrier and Wayfarers for free, then started Gambling those, always playing as Chameleon. Destrier gives +$2 and Wayfarer gives +$3, so Gambling to the end nets you money and also gets you to start with 10 Actions, thanks to Gamble netting +Action when you Gamble a cantrip.

You can then do Populate junk, and with Livery out Populate is a loop because extra Horses turn into +$2 each, making it pretty trivial to draw your deck. I did Populate twice, got to $70, and decided to stop, but I'm pretty sure you can empty the supply if you wanted to.

My setup was a bit janky and I wouldn't be surprised if turn 3 were possible, but you might need crazy luck for that to work.


Edit: Game #45236725 is a better maxed run where I empty all supply piles except Gold on turn 4. I got that pile down to 18 Golds left. I think you might be able to empty Golds if you play it a bit tighter, but it's already a lot of clicks. From a VP perspective, that game ends by giving all 10 Curses to the bot through Coven, while buying all VP cards, and since there are no VP tokens in Menagerie, that's the largest VP differential you can give out.

[Titandrake]

Proof of concepting a turn 3 Province empty. It's pretty tight at the start, it's possible that you can get there without Stockpile + Gamble + Destrier, but it makes it harder to get enough actions to play the terminals you want.


Stockpile, Cavalry, Hostelry, Scrap, Coven, Hunting Lodge, Livery, Destrier, Wayfarer, Animal Fair
Stampede, Populate, Way of the Chameleon, Gamble

Turn 1: Stampede
Turn 2: Play 1 Horse drawing 2 Copper, play rest as Chameleon, buy Populate. Draw 2 Estate off Cavalry, now you have 1 Estate left in your draw.
Turn 3: Draw Estate, Hostelry, Hunting Lodge, Livery, Wayfarer
Play everything as draw -> draws 8 cards and you have 1 action left.
Draw: 3x Estate 4x Copper Coven
Coven as draw -> Copper + Destrier
Destrier as draw -> Cavalry + Scrap
Scrap Cavalry for +1 card +1 action +$1 +buy -> Copper.

Your hand is: 3x Estate 6x Copper
Your draw is: Animal Fair, Copper

Play everything, you have $7 and 2 buys
Stockpile -> $4, 1 buy
Gamble 2x -> $5, 1 buy, at end of shuffle
Gamble plays Stockpile -> $6, 2 buys, draw and discard empty

Stockpile -> $3, 1 buy
Gamble 2x playing 2 Stockpile -> $5, 3 buys

Stockpile -> $2, 2 buys
Gamble 3x playing 3 Stockpile -> $5, 5 buys

(Now you have Stockpile-Gamble set up, empty out Stockpiles, then empty Destriers + Gamble them to get actions, then Populate. You have a Livery out so the Horses should be enough draw to get you to loop.)

[jonaskoelker]

Using only two landscapes, at most one of which is a Way, you can buy 8xProvince on turn 4. (Such kingdoms conform to the Menagerie rule book's randomization recommendations.)

SPOILER WARNING: there are no spoiler tags

Shuffle luck required:

• Open 4/3 or 3/4
• Your third hand is 1st buy, 2nd buy, 2xCopper and at most one Estate (in retrospect, this can be relaxed to "hit $5 except in a particularly bad way")
• One very friendly shuffle near the end

The key ideas:

• Use Stockpile/Gamble to get a good chunk of money
• Use Cavalry/10xDestrier to play 10xStockpile for $30 instead of gambling them for $10.
• I think this can get to $56 and enough buys for 7xProvince and a 3-pile, with merely quite good shuffle luck.
• Use Animal Fair with Gamble to turn actions in hand into net +$2 per card trashed (and gaining buys)
• Use free Wayfarers as Animal Fair fodder.
• This gets to 8xProvince, using obscene shuffle luck.

The steps:

Open Stockpile plus Bounty Hunter.
Exile Estate with Bounty Hunter on turn 3, play Stockpile and buy Stockpile plus Stampede.
On turn 4, draw 2xEstate, 5xCopper and 3 random among {2xCopper, 2xStockpile, Bounty Hunter}

Play everything in your deck except 2xEstate, by buying 2xGamble.
That is, play 6xCopper, 2xStockpile and Bounty Hunter exiling Copper, for $(15 - 4) = $11 and 3 buys.
(If you have Bounty Hunter in hand: play it, exiling Copper, and all treasures, for enough to Gamble twice to play the last treasures. If you don't have Bounty Hunter in hand, reserve one Copper, play the other 4xCopper you were guaranteed to draw, plus all other treasures, with enough money to Gamble the rest into play. Either way you play your entire deck minus the exiled Copper and minus 2xEstate, and have 1 or 2 actions left depending on whether you gambled Bounty Hunter or not.)

(Your turn three hand can also be Bounty Hunter, Stockpile, 3xCopper; exile a Copper in turn 3 and an Estate in turn 4 instead. That exiles the same two cards, for +$3 each time, and you're guaranteed to have all Estates in hand so they don't interfere with Gamble. TL;DR: it's the same, it doesn't matter)

Buy Stockpile, gamble NxStockpile for net +$0 and +2 buys (N=3 initially). Repeat this a total of 7 times, leaving one Stockpile in the supply.
This nets you $(0 + ... + 6) = +$21 and +(2 + ... + 8) = +35 buys. You have $32 and 38 buys. [You can win now by 4-piling Estate, Stockpile, Destrier, Wayfarer, even if there are 12 Estates.]

Buy Stockpile (discarding 9xStockpile), 10xDestrier, 8xWayfarer, Cavalry. You have $25 and 18 buys. Draw 2xDestrier off Cavalry's on-gain. [If I cheat-shuffle, the deck is Destriers then Stockpiles then Cavalry then Wayfarers. Less rigid shuffles will do, but not by much. This is where the obscene shuffle luck happens.]

Play 10xDestrier for a hand of 10xStockpile, Cavalry, Wayfarer. Play Wayfarer drawing 3xWayfarer.
Play 10xStockpile. Have $55 and 28 buys.
[You could have $56 if you had bought a Copper and no Wayfarers, with only very good shuffle luck. This buys 7xProvince which is majority VP if you don't put cursers in the kingdom, and you can also three-pile Stockpile, Destrier, Wayfarer on top of this.]
Gamble a Wayfarer into a hand of Cavalry+6xWayfarer, and $53.
Buy 7xAnimal Fair by trashing your hand (you have 21 buys).
Gamble all of them, to hit $67 (each is net +$2, total +$14) and at least 21 buys.

Buy 8xProvince. Optionally buy Estate and the Curse pile.

Cards used: Bounty Hunter, Stockpile, Destrier, Wayfarer, Cavalry, Animal Fair // Gamble, Stampede

Come to think of it, you probably don't need Bounty Hunter. Just open 2xStockpile, buy Stampede in turn 3 and draw deck on turn 4. You need a bit of shuffle luck to draw 3xEstate and not have them interfere with your gambling, and you need to spend at most one Stockpile when you buy Stampede since you need 2 buys to kick off. If you spend one Stockpile on turn 3, you have an 11-card deck with $10 in it, out of which you need to spend $2 on a Gamble. So you start with $8 instead of my $11, and end with $64 instead of $67.

You can also wiggle the Wayfarer business a bit: the terminal one can draw 3xCopper instead of 3xWayfarer, and you can gamble twice instead of once if you buy 9xWayfarer. This transformation nets $1. If you gambled the turn 4 Bounty Hunter you have 2 actions and not just 1, so you can draw 6xCopper with 2xWayfarer, gamble twice and draw the remaining 6xWayfarer dead. This nets an additional $3 on top of the $1. So I think you can hit $71, and also empty three piles before playing Animal Fair (spending an additional 8 buys gross, 1 buy net).