Print

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

[ShuffleNCut]

Scenarios:
*1*
Take a theoretical game, both players get a 4:3 start.  The Kindom cards are Sea Hag, Ambassador, and eight Uno cards (IE generic crap, no good + action or trashers).

What are your first two buys?

Does going second and seeing what your opponent buys affect your decision?  Does the fact that Colony is or is not on the board affect your decision?

Ambassador/Ambassador has a higher win rate than Ambassador/Sea Hag according to councilroom.com' best starting hand list.  That seems right as you should be able to pass back curses faster than you're gaining them as well as being able to get rid of coppers/estates faster.  the appeal of Hag would be that it immediately forces your opponent to play four card hands.  This seems to not be as much of an issue when one of the four might be Ambassador but it also means they won't draw Ambassador as often and that their Ambassador will effectively become a worse two card Sea Hag in those positions.


*2*
Same game, 4:3 with Ambassador/Sea Hag but now the other eight are random.  What needs to be on the board to NOT open with A/A or A/SH?

Again, if you are second and see his buys how does that affect your buys?

[DG]

Ambassador are sometimes quite difficult to judge as the other kingdom cards *always* make a difference. Once you've got your deck down to a nice controlled size with an ambassador you usually still need to expand out again with quality to finish the game. The other kingdom cards nearly always have a factor in the expansion and this feeds back into your early decisions (typically silver or ambassador at the start).

Having said that, the ambassador is nearly always superior to the sea hag. The quality of the cards is often superseded by the volume of cards in an ambassador game. A sea hag gives an opponent a card. An ambassador removes one or two cards and gives an opponent a card. After a few plays the ambassador is well ahead.

[WanderingWinder]

I'm *probably* (depends on the rest of the kingdom) going for Amb/Silver. Amb/Amb is about as good, but I don't like it quite as much. The Sea Hag is not SO horrible here, but really unnecessary - a few shuffles in, I'm probably looking to Ambassador that Sea Hag away.

[chwhite]

*2*
Same game, 4:3 with Ambassador/Sea Hag but now the other eight are random.  What needs to be on the board to NOT open with A/A or A/SH?

Again, if you are second and see his buys how does that affect your buys?

Normally I'll prefer Amb/Amb over Amb/Hag- if Ambassador is out chances are I'm just going to ignore the Hag period- they're both terminal, and Ambassador is both stronger and counters Hag very well.  There are very, very few situations where I'd take Hag but not Ambassador.

There are a few scenarios where I'd skip the Ambassador entirely, mostly involving Chapel, Possession, or Gardens.  In fact, I would consider an opponent who opens Ambassador (while I'm second) to be a strong incentive to go Gardening if there's really any support at all.  For example, Horse Traders/Gardens is marginal by itself, but it's helped tremendously by opponents' Ambassadoring.

It's even possible to win with Gardens on a board without any +Buy or Gain, just your opponent's Ambassador.  Obviously it helped that I could grab a couple Provinces with Counting House, and that my opponent kept sending me crap even after it was obvious that it was bloating my score, not just my deck.  http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110630-164132-04c75f0d.html

[randomdragoon]

*2*
Same game, 4:3 with Ambassador/Sea Hag but now the other eight are random.  What needs to be on the board to NOT open with A/A or A/SH?

Again, if you are second and see his buys how does that affect your buys?

Normally I'll prefer Amb/Amb over Amb/Hag- if Ambassador is out chances are I'm just going to ignore the Hag period- they're both terminal, and Ambassador is both stronger and counters Hag very well.  There are very, very few situations where I'd take Hag but not Ambassador.

There are a few scenarios where I'd skip the Ambassador entirely, mostly involving Chapel, Possession, or Gardens.  In fact, I would consider an opponent who opens Ambassador (while I'm second) to be a strong incentive to go Gardening if there's really any support at all.  For example, Horse Traders/Gardens is marginal by itself, but it's helped tremendously by opponents' Ambassadoring.

It's even possible to win with Gardens on a board without any +Buy or Gain, just your opponent's Ambassador.  Obviously it helped that I could grab a couple Provinces with Counting House, and that my opponent kept sending me crap even after it was obvious that it was bloating my score, not just my deck.  http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110630-164132-04c75f0d.html

I don't think it's a good idea to skip Ambassador in the face of Possession. If your opponent gets an Ambassador, you're going to have a lot of trouble to get $6P with all the junk in your deck. Furthermore, your opponent's deck will be so trim that he will be able to play his Possession very often while you will not, even if you manage to get one in the first place. Finally, your opponent can always make you take an Ambassador anyway, by Ambassadoring and Ambassador.

[DG]

I don't think it's a good idea to skip Ambassador in the face of Possession. If your opponent gets an Ambassador, you're going to have a lot of trouble to get $6P with all the junk in your deck.

It all depends. I played a game recently where my opponent took an ambassador and got the possession many turns before me and some provinces as well. There was something like king's court or golem in the kingdom though so as soon as my possession arrived the balance of power shifted until I had every useful card from his deck.

[WanderingWinder]

If there's a pretty good trasher (certainly if there's something like chapel), then you should probably forego the ambassador.
On the other hand, the double amb player will eventually give one to the other player, and can do the possession trick anyway

[randomdragoon]

I don't think it's a good idea to skip Ambassador in the face of Possession. If your opponent gets an Ambassador, you're going to have a lot of trouble to get $6P with all the junk in your deck.

It all depends. I played a game recently where my opponent took an ambassador and got the possession many turns before me and some provinces as well. There was something like king's court or golem in the kingdom though so as soon as my possession arrived the balance of power shifted until I had every useful card from his deck.

There's still the issue of your opponent being able to play Ambassador, reveal an Ambassador and give you one anyway.