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[AJP82]

Hi,

Newbie here, started Dominion in person about 1 1/2 years ago when playing over a friend's house about once a month. Started online play probably 1 month ago.

Posting because I want to ask about a game I had today. What I'm wondering is how to improve this game. I mean, it feels like the win was on a fluke of a turn, but I don't see how second place's deck should've been able to compete, either. And it sort of feels like I didn't play the cities/havens/bridges properly. How much is there to this sentiment?

[O]

Your strategy was clearly the optimal one. You made a few errors in the implementation of this strategy, and the Big-Money player (someone who buys primarily money and few actions) who came in second seems to be a bit lucky in how he did.

Things I noticed that would improve your game:

1) Turn 7 you trashed your mining village and bought a platinum. You should have kept the mining village and bought more engine components, as money ends up not being too useful for you. Turn 18 you bought your second platinum. Same story, this time buy three engine components.

2) You bought your first tactician turn 14. You want a tactician as early as possible, probably in turns 5-7. This is because Bridges get very very powerful when you play multiple in one turn, and Tactician is a lovely way to enable that. This is probably the largest mistake in the game; you could have won in maybe 19 turns with an earlier tactician.

3) You don't need 7 cities. You can have a mix of mining villages and cities, but the pile you want to really focus on is bridge. Once you get a decent bridge combo (3+) running the cities will be easy, and the cities will be more valuable

[DG]

There tactician is going to be a strong card here. When you have a 10 card hand you can play more cards out in combination. This means that if you can play more bridges you get can get more buys and every buy has the cost reduced  further. It also means that if you play a coppersmith you can increase the value of more coppers. Given the presence of the cities in a three player game, the bridges are probably better. You can then plan to empty the bridge or city pile and finish with some flashy bridge mega turn.

As a more advanced tip, I'll suggest that this is a kingdom where you don't want many silvers. As soon as you've got a 5 cost card (tactician) you probably won't want to see that silver much again and would rather see the top card of your draw deck. There is an option to buy wishing wells or havens instead of silver.

[DStu]

I think I would try to play this with as less money as possible, double Tactician into Bridges, Cities and Mining Villages. There is no trashing to help the double Tac, but it should work anyway.

So I would start Bridge/Silver, and hope to never see $3 again. If it works well (early $5), go for Tactician and buy WishingWell/Havens at $3 or lower. Bridges/MV at $4, Cities at $5, and a second Tactician once there are enough virtual coins in the deck that I don't need the real coins anymore. Haven first can be used to save Treasures from being discard by Tactician.
When 2 Tacticians are in the deck, try to play one every turn, discard all the Treasure and run your economy by Bridges/Cities/Markets. The large hands will let you play many Bridges, which gets really good when massed.

:e Watch out for the 3 pile ending, as you will have massive buys with massive cost reduction you can more or less end the game to your will when you are leading.

[AJP82]

Thanks for the input.

Here's another one I'm wondering about. I used to think of Bishop as basically a "trash estates/maybe coppers to thin your deck, get spare VPs in the process" type of card, then wondered why I kept losing. But I think I'm starting to figure out how to use it. Is there a better way to play the following game?

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/28/game-20120428-173152-9c7a14f3.html

My general theory was at first to use the border villages to get a few cities, while using the border villages as Bishop fodder. When I got a few cities together, enough I felt to keep up with my courtyards/bishops/militia, I started getting golds instead. Eventually, with enough silvers and the militia, I figured I could just trash golds and still have enough to keep buying them, or use them to buy provinces to trash whenever I had the money to do that instead.

[Kirian]

Thanks for the input.

Here's another one I'm wondering about. I used to think of Bishop as basically a "trash estates/maybe coppers to thin your deck, get spare VPs in the process" type of card, then wondered why I kept losing. But I think I'm starting to figure out how to use it. Is there a better way to play the following game?

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201204/28/game-20120428-173152-9c7a14f3.html

My general theory was at first to use the border villages to get a few cities, while using the border villages as Bishop fodder. When I got a few cities together, enough I felt to keep up with my courtyards/bishops/militia, I started getting golds instead. Eventually, with enough silvers and the militia, I figured I could just trash golds and still have enough to keep buying them, or use them to buy provinces to trash whenever I had the money to do that instead.

In general, Bishop <3 Border Village for exactly the reason you've stated.  Since you had, and were likely to maintain, the City advantage, I'd have probably continued buying BV/City with $6, and gotten Cities boosted by at least a pile.  I do think you trashed your Bishops a bit early though... with that engine I think you want about 3 Bishops in deck at any given time, ideally using two of them each turn.

Also, a bit more advanced, you had a rare P2 advantage.  When your opponent opened Bishop, you knew you'd get some early cheap trashing.  You could have opened Militia/Silver and set your opponent back in those first few turns, then gotten a Bishop on T4 or T5.

Oh wow, I just noticed Embassy in there.  One or two of those could have been massive.