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[ShuffleNCut]

...on This 32 turn slog fest.

In retrospect, the presence of chapel leads me to believe that Hag is a worse open than Militia.  Agree/Disagree?

Feels like Militia would let me react to his Potion buy better later as well.  On a Militia/Ghost ship turn you will essentially have to have Gold+Gold+Potion to buy Possession.  It hit me soon after buying my reactive Potion that the chances were lower for me to buy one than for him.  It turns out that both of our decks end up buying two.

I'm also wondering if I should have bought a Council Room sooner.  Maybe even opening Silver/Chapel with plans of skipping up to the super Militia that is Ghost Ship.  If there were even one decent village effect I may have even gone for a Scrying Pool deck.

As it turns out my terminals conflict often early and I barely trash at all early.  My opponent does a great job of getting rid of all the curses Hag throws him and I end up losing by a tiny margin.  In recent days Militia has really been beating up on Sea Hags in games I've played.  Maybe I'm still valuing it too highly in games with a decent amount of trashing.

[jayarsea]

I feel like the real advantage of militia vs seahag [regarding chapel] is that it slows down his trashing dramatically to nuke his handsize to 3.

[Superdad]

I may read into this game a little more when I have some time at lunch (I'm very intrigued by the board). I must say one thing as a first-glance...

Your first 5 turns were plagued with bad luck. First, he militia'd your chapel hand, whicn in my opinion is the single most disastrous thing that can happen in the first 4 turns of this game. The loss of two trashed cards is so profoundly impactful. Not only do you later draw those two junky cards, but the next time you draw your chapel, there is less junk in your deck because of your new buys (and 2 trashes) and you are more likely to draw fresh-buys with the chapel....

which ALSO happens to you in your next chapel turn: Chapel, Copper Copper Silver Sea hag. This is the next worst case scenario. Infact, you would have rather him miltia you this turn, instead of the previous, since you aren't really chapelling there either.

Those two missed chapels have just such an insane impact on the entire remainder of the game. It's probably along the lines of starting with 5 copper 5 estate as a handicap.

///edit: Infact, your 3rd (and 4th) chapels gets screwed up as well:   (Estate, a Chapel, a Copper, a Sea Hag, and a Silver). Then later, your 4th chapel is dead: (ShuffleNCut draws: a Gold, a Silver, a Chapel, a Sea Hag, and a Copper). This just further illustrates my point of how critical those first chapels are. If you miss them, it becomes increasingly difficult to get any utility whatsoever out of chapel, and it's (almost) a dead card. Now it's turn 14-15 and your deck has swelled. There's no point wasting a terminal action on chapelling, wasting the turn, and barely improving the consistency of your deck. The opportunity cost of chapelling is too high now.. so chapel is truly a dead card. That's due to nothing but miltia and a little bad luck  //end edit.



For that reason, anytime I see militia and chapel in the game, regardless of anything else on the board (except for witch/montebank with a 5/2 opening) I will always start militia/chapel. The potential of militia'ing his first chapel turn is just too important to pass up.

And on second thought, while i think that Montebank/Chapel and witch/chapel are the #1 starts (as also demonstrated by isotropic best/worst starts),  I actually think that on a board with Militia, you should actually open militia/chapel even on a 5/2. I'd be interested to hear other thoughts on this. Again, I know Monte/Chapel is basically the "nut-high" on average, I think in a kingdom also including militia, that militia is actually a stronger start.

Being able to possibly militia his first chapel (while he doesn't militia yours), then use the militia to buy a montebank is stronger than going monte first yourself. Thoughts? (Also, I hope to not derail this thread that much - perhaps this discussion warrants it's own thread).

[DG]

As it turns out my terminals conflict often early and I barely trash at all early.

In some of those cases you could have trashed and not played the sea hag. I wouldn't worry too much about falling behind through bad draws though.

It hit me soon after buying my reactive Potion

The timing of your potion buy was wrong for two reasons. You could have bought a potion sooner for scrying pools and philosopher's stones. Both were going to be decent value. You also bought that reactive potion with a 6 coin hand when you had two more hands before the reshuffle, giving you an option to buy the potion on one of those. I think that a philosopher's stone would have been of more value to you than a possession as well, especially if you'd bought some other terminal cards sooner.

Geronimo's simulator says that sea hag +chapel beats militia + chapel.

[Superdad]

Looking a little further, I notice something else that I hate about possession...

You recover decently (as well as you likely can), and your first possession of him yields this mess:

Possession, a Militia, a Chapel, a Curse, and a Copper.

What a pile. Could that possession hand be any worse? Seriously. Even though his deck is tighter than yours at this point, his first possession of you yields this:

2 Golds, a Potion, a Province, and a Copper.

Honestly, that's one of the reasons I can't stand possession. It feels like sometimes the game is just taken out of your hands and given to the shuffler.

Possession on average should be a slight equalizer. His deck at this point is better than yours (due to him chapelling very efficiently and buying more golds), so your possessions should be stronger and equalize the game a bit. I believe this is why possession games sometimes get drawn out a bit. However, you hit his junk (literally the worst set of cards in his deck that you could possess), and he hits your best.


The only thing I can see so far that was in your control was opening militia vs chapel, instead of sea hag. And someone better than me may well say that your opening was better than his - I just feel like militia is the single hardest counter to chapel games. Other than that one play, I'm just seeing a boatload of bad luck in the most crucial and defining stages of the game.
   

/edit, really? I'm surprised that hag/chapel beats militia/chapel. What were the constraints of the simulation? Did the miltia opener pick up a sea hag afterwards, or did he just skip cursing all together? 3 terminals is bad, but I'd think you dont want to just concede to receive 10 curses, regardless of chapel? You'd really crush your buying power though, I'm sure on a hag/militia/3 copper hand you would want to play militia.

[ShuffleNCut]

I think I mentally wrote Scrying Pool off due to no +Action or useful non terminals and wrote Philosopher's Stone off due to the fact that I opened Chapel.  As it turns out Stone would have been worth 6/7 by the final turns and Pool...  well, I guess it's better than Spy here.

As far as buying the Potion for six: I knew I had a ton of cash left in my deck and didn't want to pass up buying a Province on one of the next couple turns and then miss my window on the reshuffle.  As it worked out I had six three turns in a row.

I am definitely liking the idea of Militia in Chapel games.  The way the early attacks really spiral out to major effect later in the game is huge.  I think that if I had Militia and Ghost Ship in my deck early on it absolutely wrecks his ability to first buy Possession and then later slows down his ability to draw and play it.

[DStu]

/edit, really? I'm surprised that hag/chapel beats militia/chapel. What were the constraints of the simulation? Did the miltia opener pick up a sea hag afterwards, or did he just skip cursing all together? 3 terminals is bad, but I'd think you dont want to just concede to receive 10 curses, regardless of chapel? You'd really crush your buying power though, I'm sure on a hag/militia/3 copper hand you would want to play militia.

Played around a little. I think the situation is the following:
Single SeaHag >>> Single Militia, something like 90:10
with Chapel, Milita catches up but does not really reach the Hag, probably because the SeaHag has a higher influence on the rest of the game, while Milita is stronger at start.
If you compare
SeaHag/Chapel+Milita vs Milita/Chapel+SeaHag (so changing the order of the buys), Milita/Chapel beats SeaHag 65:35. This is certainly also not optimal yet because I think you prob should buy some Silver before the third terminal, but I think it's good enough to demonstrate Superdad's point.

[Superdad]

Indeed, that's what I was thinking... that Mil/Chap then Hag beats Hag/Chap then Mil (or no mil at all).

Any game with trashing/cursing typically goes:
1) Mess up eachother's decks
2) Recover
3) Race to VP

I think militia/chap then Hag does the best job of completing farking over the opponent. Your militia can potentially devastate his chapel hand, which snowballs into an enormous impact (as illustrated very well in this sample game). Then you start hagging him while also possibly impacting his ability to recover/trash. Then you trash yourself. Then you focus on Militia/buying money, while impacting his ability to recover.

For example, I'd open Militia/Chapel and hope to militia his chapel hand. I would then buy a hag and probably prioritize Hag > Militia > Chapel. Once curses are around half-gone, I'd switch my focus now towards trashing and impacting his trashing, so my priority would now change to playing Militia > Trashing with Chapel when ideal > Hagging and trying to buy up gold anytime I could.

I would then stay on this plan of trying to clean up faster than him, and race him to a 3-pile ending (likely with duchy/curse/estate).... i.e. 1) Mess him up, 2) Recover Faster, 3) Race to VP lead/quick game end as possible.

Also, to be honest, I think I would completely skip Potion alltogether on this board. I would just mess him up, recover faster, and race him to VP and an early game end. If he recovers then spends 3-4 turns getting potion, buying possession, waiting for a reshuffle, drawing possession, hopefully getting something out of it.... that's SLOW as molasses. I'd just race to buying power, let him do his slow as heck recovery, and just beat him on duchy/curse/other piles with a VP lead. Go ahead and possess me, my deck is very duchy heavy. Enjoy your $5 possession turns. Now buy a duchy with it and help me 3-pile faster

[guided]

Some general advice that isn't specific to this game:

My experience is that most of the time no trashing opening (not even Chapel) is fast enough to outpace a non-trashing opening with a cursing attack. In fact I find Chapel is usually outclassed even against a turn 3/4 Witch.

The secondary problem with Chapel against cursing attacks is that even if you succeed in trimming your deck, it doesn't stay trimmed, so you're consistently at 4 or even 3 non-curse cards in hand, and you have to keep burning a terminal action to trash your curses.

[DStu]

_Single Witch vs. _Single Chapel: 82:15

[ShuffleNCut]

Chapel by itself is not god mode.  You do 'waste' several turns on deck thinning.  If left alone _Single Chapel is better than Big Money by about two turns (which is about half a turn SLOWER than _Single Smithy which is a 74:23 fave in the matchup).  The key to Chapel is that it lets you play your really good cards that much more often.  _Single Chapel+Single Witch = 57:40 vs _Single Witch and all of a sudden flip flops vs _Single Smithy to 71:26 fave.

I definitely learned some things from this thread and I now have some experiments to work through.  Glad I posted.

[Superdad]

Some general advice that isn't specific to this game:

My experience is that most of the time no trashing opening (not even Chapel) is fast enough to outpace a non-trashing opening with a cursing attack. In fact I find Chapel is usually outclassed even against a turn 3/4 Witch.

The secondary problem with Chapel against cursing attacks is that even if you succeed in trimming your deck, it doesn't stay trimmed, so you're consistently at 4 or even 3 non-curse cards in hand, and you have to keep burning a terminal action to trash your curses.

This is a good point, and I think it is another reason that in a trashing/cursing game, the best way to recover is with money, not any more terminals. You don't mind using your chapel to dump a curse if you then drop gold gold silver and buy a province. It's much better than choosing between chapeling away a curse or play ghost ship.

On this board, once I have chapel, militia, Hag, I'd probably spend every remaining buy just getting money, then I'd assess if I was going to go 3-pile or province ending. Ideally there is some form of warehouse-type card, I'll go duchy-ending, since you green your deck faster this way, and really put pressure on him to overcome his VP deficit quickly, before piles are run out. Cursing games will typically end on 3-piles since by definition there is 1-pile empty quickly (curses), and the decks are slower (bogged with curses), so getting to provinces is tough. This is exaggerated further if there is a cheap spammable card (and doubly so if there is one that provides +buy) such as pawn.

These are all things I look for when I see a cursing/trashing kingdom.