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[Robz888]

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/04/game-20120404-092323-6b47cab7.html

cards in supply: Bridge, City, Familiar, Horse Traders, Jack of All Trades, Noble Brigand, Pearl Diver, Potion, Royal Seal, Throne Room, and Trading Post

My immediate reaction is that there's nothing special going on here, so I open with Jack to guard myself in case he goes Familiar and I figure double Jack might be the best thing here anyway. He does go Familiar, which is fine by me. Familiar should do even worse against Jack than other cursers, because it takes a couple turns to actually get off the ground with them.

Long story short: he gets 2 Throne Rooms, which drastically accelerates his cursing. In fact he gives me ALL 10 Curses on Turns 8, 9, 11, and 13. He is also accumulating Cities, and I really have no choice but to a grab 2 of them myself on turns I don't have enough for Provinces. He also takes bridges, earns a quick megaturn, blows past me in the score, and that's game. A good win for him!

[Fate]

Really interesting game.

Hard to know if this strategy is reliable as it obviously takes some shuffle luck to draw your throne room and familiar together. 

The fact that it takes longer to get the curses into your deck with familiar may actually be better than using a faster curser against jack.  My reasoning would be that a jack strategy requires building up an economy with lots of silvers and coppers, meaning you need to draw a bunch of them to buy provinces, curses are going to especially hurt this kind of deck by adding so many dead cards.  Jack normally deals pretty well with this because it can trash curses almost as fast as they come in, however delayed cursing will mean that your deck is thicker so you can play the jack less often to counter.  Obviously the fact that he was giving multiple curses per turn makes this even worse.  Also I'm surprised you never ended up buying a second jack.

[Robz888]

Really interesting game.

Hard to know if this strategy is reliable as it obviously takes some shuffle luck to draw your throne room and familiar together. 

The fact that it takes longer to get the curses into your deck with familiar may actually be better than using a faster curser against jack.  My reasoning would be that a jack strategy requires building up an economy with lots of silvers and coppers, meaning you need to draw a bunch of them to buy provinces, curses are going to especially hurt this kind of deck by adding so many dead cards.  Jack normally deals pretty well with this because it can trash curses almost as fast as they come in, however delayed cursing will mean that your deck is thicker so you can play the jack less often to counter.  Obviously the fact that he was giving multiple curses per turn makes this even worse.  Also I'm surprised you never ended up buying a second jack.

I actually DID buy a second Jack, and I did so immediately on Turn 3. But you've made me realize something... I accidentally trashed the second Jack on Turn 17. I am positive I meant to trash a Curse I had drawn, so that was just a mistake. But I only got 2 more turns, and I didn't really do anything meaningful on them, so I'm pretty sure it didn't impact the game.

You might be right, that Familiar's delayed cursing means the Curses come at a time when you will be drawing Jack less frequently to get rid of them. I just expected to be so far ahead by then, it wouldn't matter. I think he did get a little lucky, though, to connect the TRs and Familiars the way he did.

[rrenaud]

I want to give you a good guy greg meme for posting a game report in which you lost.

But I lack creativity.

[Geronimoo]

I don't like these posts. It's ONE game so it's very dangerous to draw the conclusion that Familiars will beat Jack if you add Throne Rooms. On average the Familiar player will get crushed because his Throne Rooms will fizzle so often. This guy got lucky.

[Fate]

My bad in missing the turn 3 buy.  I didn't think to look in the trash as I wouldn't have expected you to trash it.

I'm agreed with Geronimoo, but still useful to learn from in case you have a kingdom which lends itself more to managing the shuffle luck (chapel, warehouse etc.)

I'm curious what other situations (if any) would benefit from a delayed cursing attack though.  Perhaps engine games where you wait till they pass the point of no return before gumming it up.  Though cursers are very rarely ignored, so maybe that situation never comes up.

[rrenaud]

The turn 3 throne room buy with no other actions does seem crazy.

But what if there was a terminal silver in there instead (Chancellor, Woodcutter, Fortune Teller) to land the Throne Rooms if the Familiars missed.

[Rabid]

Cool game, but isn't this about City being good with the curse pile running out.
and the Bridge + TR + big draw engine is a good combo.

[Robz888]

I don't like these posts. It's ONE game so it's very dangerous to draw the conclusion that Familiars will beat Jack if you add Throne Rooms. On average the Familiar player will get crushed because his Throne Rooms will fizzle so often. This guy got lucky.

I didn't mean to imply that I've discovered a secret new Dominion rule where Familiar + Throne Room is always strong against Double Jack. This was just one game where that occurred.

I think the lesson is not to get trapped by conventional wisdom. I looked at the setup, said to myself, "Well, I don't see much potential for an engine, Jack is fairly fast and a good defense if he goes Familiar, and I don't expect Cities to activate scarily quickly. Jack/Jack/Money it is." Which caused me to miss the fact that Throned Familiars would really deplete those Curses, hurt me more than Jack could handle, and allow for a Cities + Bridges mega turn.

(But I'm not knocking conventional wisdom, either. It has certainly helped me drastically improve my game.)

[RisingJaguar]

The turn 3 throne room buy with no other actions does seem crazy.

His Turn 4 throne room choice is absolutely nuts!  Even getting $3P is pretty hard to do with 5 dead cards in your deck. 

[O]

Does DoubleJack get half the VP quickly enough to beat City-TR-Bridge?

[Robz888]

Does DoubleJack get half the VP quickly enough to beat City-TR-Bridge?

That's a good question. I think it's a little tough deciding how to go about that. How many of each would you want? You would probably have to empty a pile so you could level up the Cities for the draw to play multiple Bridges, because just having a lot of Throne Rooms would only go so far. That might defeat a Jack deck. I'm not sure. Someone want to simulate?

[DStu]

Does DoubleJack get half the VP quickly enough to beat City-TR-Bridge?

I would say that some kind of attack (say Familiar) might help here...

[O]

Does DoubleJack get half the VP quickly enough to beat City-TR-Bridge?

I would say that some kind of attack (say Familiar) might help here...

But if you go familiar you can't go Jack. So it might be Rock-Paper-Scissors that Jack>Familiar>TR-City-Bridge>Jack

[DG]

If the familiar deck can get a trading post then it will work well enough. Maybe that was the optimistic plan that got turned into two equally optimistic throne rooms with 4 coin hands.