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[Empathy]

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/07/game-20120507-081505-520e44c9.html

Crossroad/Vault as p1 was going to be hard to beat. Luckily, the board allowed for a nice quarry/horse trader interaction, although I pulled off the combo very late (T8), considering the presence of HP to accelerate the collision. Because of that, I was far too behind on the province race and had to look for alternative greening, leading to a weird HP deck that, despite 8 HPs, did not systematically draw itself every turn (but Crossroad helped). The transition from perfect (but vp-wise behind) HP engine to messy HP/XRoad/fairgrounds deck was fun to play, and I think, unexpected by my opponent.

[philosophyguy]

Interesting…I haven't seen Hunting Party used successfully in a deck with that kind of variety before. Very cool game!

[chwhite]

Interesting…I haven't seen Hunting Party used successfully in a deck with that kind of variety before. Very cool game!

If your deck has plenty of variety, than Hunting Party is merely as good as Laboratory.

[O]

Interesting…I haven't seen Hunting Party used successfully in a deck with that kind of variety before. Very cool game!

If your deck has plenty of variety, than Hunting Party is merely as good as Laboratory.

....That is still slightly better because you're still probably skipping over some coppers.

[Empathy]

Interesting…I haven't seen Hunting Party used successfully in a deck with that kind of variety before. Very cool game!

If your deck has plenty of variety, than Hunting Party is merely as good as Laboratory.

Actually, most HP intuition is built on the usual 2-card archetype: HP-terminal-(gold-silver-copper). In that setup, you only need 4-5 HPs to nearly deterministically draw your whole deck. Buying any more usually means falling behind on the province race.

But in this case, Quarry/Horse trader *invites* you to go heavier on the HP, at the expense of losing the province race. Now, the first thing I noticed in playing an 8 HP deck (and which is a crucial point in favor of *some* diversity) is how much you waste HPs if you don't have enough deck diversity. Now, this runs very much against the classic intuition of the HP engine, but it truly means the following: the classic HP engine *only* makes a province a turn, and often ends up not playing all its HPs (or at least, they don't do much more than trigger a reschuffle) for lack of appropriate target. In this game, I was careful to balance enough diversity into the mix to *almost* draw my whole deck systematically (again, crossroad helped a lot), allowing me a few turns at more than just one green. Of course, the fact that the deck-diversity also boosted the fairgrounds at the end was what pushed the deck over the top. But I avoided reaching 15 differently named cards *too early*, and grabbed some extra crossroads before that.

Agreed, it's a lot messier than the elegant 2-card deterministic HP-terminal combo (or the super-fast crossroad/vault: by the second reschuffle, my opponent had grabbed a gold and a province!) but I think it's worth exploring those strategies.

[WanderingWinder]

Interesting…I haven't seen Hunting Party used successfully in a deck with that kind of variety before. Very cool game!

If your deck has plenty of variety, than Hunting Party is merely as good as Laboratory.

Actually, most HP intuition is built on the usual 2-card archetype: HP-terminal-(gold-silver-copper). In that setup, you only need 4-5 HPs to nearly deterministically draw your whole deck. Buying any more usually means falling behind on the province race.

But in this case, Quarry/Horse trader *invites* you to go heavier on the HP, at the expense of losing the province race. Now, the first thing I noticed in playing an 8 HP deck (and which is a crucial point in favor of *some* diversity) is how much you waste HPs if you don't have enough deck diversity. Now, this runs very much against the classic intuition of the HP engine, but it truly means the following: the classic HP engine *only* makes a province a turn, and often ends up not playing all its HPs (or at least, they don't do much more than trigger a reschuffle) for lack of appropriate target. In this game, I was careful to balance enough diversity into the mix to *almost* draw my whole deck systematically (again, crossroad helped a lot), allowing me a few turns at more than just one green. Of course, the fact that the deck-diversity also boosted the fairgrounds at the end was what pushed the deck over the top. But I avoided reaching 15 differently named cards *too early*, and grabbed some extra crossroads before that.

Agreed, it's a lot messier than the elegant 2-card deterministic HP-terminal combo (or the super-fast crossroad/vault: by the second reschuffle, my opponent had grabbed a gold and a province!) but I think it's worth exploring those strategies.

I seriously doubt you can reliably get 8 HP... can you?

[Empathy]

I'm pretty sure quarry/horse trader does that pretty systematically.

The thing is, once you have 2-3 HPs, they will make it increasingly likely you get the quarry/HT combo, which makes for a double HP turn.

Of course, nothing prevents your opponent from trying the same. But the point is, if he has a structural advantage in not doing so (mostly opening/first shuffle outcome), then yes.

Unless you think he should have contested the HPs instead of buying province? Even then, you could imagine my combo triggering before T8 (it had a 50% chance of happening T6 onwards...). I could have had 9 HPs by T10 (but instead went for a fairground and 8 HP). I am pretty sure the average is T9 for 8 HPs. (edit: ok, maybe I was a bit optimistic. hitting 3$ is pretty bad: examples 8@T9, 8@T11, 8+province@T13, 9@T10, 9@T11. Mind you, in my game, the vault helped me on T5, which probably lowers the average turn to T10?).

edit: quick simulations using barely modified versions of the optimized vault and HP bots.

Vault-Xroad outperforms regular Vault against a non-vault player (80-16 instread of 76-19 against BMU). Unfortunately, the simulator makes the Vault-Xroad player discard greens on other player's vaults, even if an Xroad is in hand, making a direct comparison somewhat meaningless (the numbers are 46-49 in favor of regular vault).

Now Vault-Xroad outperforms HP-HT 51-44 assuming no p1/p2 bias (but 5/2 vs 4/3). It turns into 74-20 with the p1 bias (which is ridiculously fast). I obviously did not code my fairgrounds thing... but my point is that me playing regular HP/HT was not an option... unless p1 wasted his early 8$ hands contesting HPs, in which case I don't *need* 8 HPs, as I can now race provinces and be competitive.

[WanderingWinder]

I'm pretty sure quarry/horse trader does that pretty systematically.

The thing is, once you have 2-3 HPs, they will make it increasingly likely you get the quarry/HT combo, which makes for a double HP turn.

Of course, nothing prevents your opponent from trying the same. But the point is, if he has a structural advantage in not doing so (mostly opening/first shuffle outcome), then yes.

Unless you think he should have contested the HPs instead of buying province? Even then, you could imagine my combo triggering before T8 (it had a 50% chance of happening T6 onwards...). I could have had 9 HPs by T10 (but instead went for a fairground and 8 HP). I am pretty sure the average is T9 for 8 HPs. (edit: ok, maybe I was a bit optimistic. hitting 3$ is pretty bad: examples 8@T9, 8@T11, 8+province@T13, 9@T10, 9@T11. Mind you, in my game, the vault helped me on T5, which probably lowers the average turn to T10?).

edit: quick simulations using barely modified versions of the optimized vault and HP bots.

Vault-Xroad outperforms regular Vault against a non-vault player (80-16 instread of 76-19 against BMU). Unfortunately, the simulator makes the Vault-Xroad player discard greens on other player's vaults, even if an Xroad is in hand, making a direct comparison somewhat meaningless (the numbers are 46-49 in favor of regular vault).

Now Vault-Xroad outperforms HP-HT 51-44 assuming no p1/p2 bias (but 5/2 vs 4/3). It turns into 74-20 with the p1 bias (which is ridiculously fast). I obviously did not code my fairgrounds thing... but my point is that me playing regular HP/HT was not an option... unless p1 wasted his early 8$ hands contesting HPs, in which case I don't *need* 8 HPs, as I can now race provinces and be competitive.

And again in the second case, HP/HT is pretty well hurt by the anti-vault play rules - discards way too often.
I don't understand how opponent is getting a significant number of $8 hands before HPs are run out, if you're running them so fast. Indeed, in my experience, in these kinds of matchups, early in the game, $8 and 2 buys should be HP+silver. Now, I understand that Quarry/HT/HP is going to be pretty darn fast at picking HPs up. And sometimes, it will get you an 8/2 split, or better, I just don't see you doing that reliably against a HT/HP player, who after all is going for lots of HPs as well, with reasonably good chances of getting them. Heck, there's a pretty good chance he has 2 before the 2nd reshuffle...

Edit: That's a 27.2% chance: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=30.msg265#msg265

[Empathy]

I'm pretty sure quarry/horse trader does that pretty systematically.

The thing is, once you have 2-3 HPs, they will make it increasingly likely you get the quarry/HT combo, which makes for a double HP turn.

Of course, nothing prevents your opponent from trying the same. But the point is, if he has a structural advantage in not doing so (mostly opening/first shuffle outcome), then yes.

Unless you think he should have contested the HPs instead of buying province? Even then, you could imagine my combo triggering before T8 (it had a 50% chance of happening T6 onwards...). I could have had 9 HPs by T10 (but instead went for a fairground and 8 HP). I am pretty sure the average is T9 for 8 HPs. (edit: ok, maybe I was a bit optimistic. hitting 3$ is pretty bad: examples 8@T9, 8@T11, 8+province@T13, 9@T10, 9@T11. Mind you, in my game, the vault helped me on T5, which probably lowers the average turn to T10?).

edit: quick simulations using barely modified versions of the optimized vault and HP bots.

Vault-Xroad outperforms regular Vault against a non-vault player (80-16 instread of 76-19 against BMU). Unfortunately, the simulator makes the Vault-Xroad player discard greens on other player's vaults, even if an Xroad is in hand, making a direct comparison somewhat meaningless (the numbers are 46-49 in favor of regular vault).

Now Vault-Xroad outperforms HP-HT 51-44 assuming no p1/p2 bias (but 5/2 vs 4/3). It turns into 74-20 with the p1 bias (which is ridiculously fast). I obviously did not code my fairgrounds thing... but my point is that me playing regular HP/HT was not an option... unless p1 wasted his early 8$ hands contesting HPs, in which case I don't *need* 8 HPs, as I can now race provinces and be competitive.

And again in the second case, HP/HT is pretty well hurt by the anti-vault play rules - discards way too often.
I don't understand how opponent is getting a significant number of $8 hands before HPs are run out, if you're running them so fast. Indeed, in my experience, in these kinds of matchups, early in the game, $8 and 2 buys should be HP+silver. Now, I understand that Quarry/HT/HP is going to be pretty darn fast at picking HPs up. And sometimes, it will get you an 8/2 split, or better, I just don't see you doing that reliably against a HT/HP player, who after all is going for lots of HPs as well, with reasonably good chances of getting them. Heck, there's a pretty good chance he has 2 before the 2nd reshuffle...

Edit: That's a 27.2% chance: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=30.msg265#msg265

Absolutely correct! But again, in this particular case, my opponent opened 5/2 as p1, so he can't open HT/silver. Now he could open HP/Xroad, but I am pretty convinced vault/Xroad is the better option... at least against HP/HT, given that it gives him a 74-20 edge. Now, in a HP/HT mirror match, I would not go so aggressively for HPs, but rather buy gold+HP (something that's easy to do with quarry) the first time, then probably province+HP or maybe just stick to regular HP/HT according to first reschuffle luck.

The reason for the p1 advantage of vault/crossroad is pretty easy to see, both on the log and when you click a few sample games of the simulator. Vault/crossroads lacks +buy, and often overshoots the 5$ mark. Not only that, but it hits early 8s *extremely often* (Xroad+2estates draw into vault + silver), and greens much more aggressively than other strategies (both because of vault and Xroad). This forces an HP player to buy duchies, which in turn slows down his engine. In the game log I gave you, my opponent has Xroad,Vault,silver,gold,province,remake,province as his first buys).

Unless I've messed up my simulation, Vault/Xroad is the way to go for a p1 opening 5/2... and HP/HT just loses the province race very badly.

[WanderingWinder]

The simulation messes up the simulation by totally misplaying the HP against the vault. Having said that, Vault may well be the way to go here.

[Empathy]

The simulation messes up the simulation by totally misplaying the HP against the vault. Having said that, Vault may well be the way to go here.

True!  Somehow, it seemed obvious to me that vault-reactions were misplayed against crossroad, but I oversaw HP (again xD).