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[Smithe]

Maybe this has been covered before, but after a loss on iso I was wondering, if you should ever try to run the provinces out before colonies? In what situations would that strategy work (if ever)?

[lespeutere]

It may be a good idea with
tournaments
governors
joat
minions.

In case your opponent needs to much time to set up his colony gaining machinery.

[qmech]

In a heavily Cursed game you might resign yourself to never reaching $11 for Colonies and hit the Provinces instead.  It's probably more common that you buy them heavily alongside Colonies in prolonged money games.

[ftl]

Yeah, in a money game, you might end up running out provinces instead of colonies if you start just a greening a little too early, and then neither of you can buy the last few colonies (and can't spare the time to re-build-up money, because provinces will run out.) Or if it's a cursing game, with some second and third pile that are apt to run out if you keep trying to build up to Colonies, the curses prolong the game so the two other piles get low, and then you both have to start greening instead of building up more because the game's gonna end if you keep buying components instead of green.

I bet there's some rare cases of engines that have a significantly easier time reaching 8 for 8 turns in a row than reaching 11 for 5 turns in a row, maybe something like Tactician/Vault with no other card draw? It's a marginal case though.

Maybe if you're building a mega-turn engine of some sort, it's easier to mega-turn for 8 provinces instead of 8 colonies. That's possible.

[Davio]

I wonder if the Province version of the Golden deck is faster than the Colony version.
I think this has been checked, but I can't remember the results.

[GendoIkari]

I think that Bridge/Highway megaturns could easily mean that Provinces are the way to go, also. Why bother building up to Colonies if you can buy 8 Provinces and win this turn? Or buy 1 Province and 3-pile before your opponent has started to green.

[ehunt]

I agree with lespeutere strongly on governor/JOAT/tournament assessment. I don't think I agree with the minions, but I've never tried it and could be wrong (minion decks really have a hard time holding 8 provinces, but on the other hand, the constant minion attacks may slow the opponent's ability to grab colonies?). Maybe trader? (same reasoning as JOAT).

Anyway, the most important thing to understand is that it's pretty rare. The math works like this (roughly): you need to get seven provinces (42) before your opponent can get four colonies (40)*; yeah, you get to start earlier cause provinces are cheaper, but the burden is roughly a four or five turn advantage in purchasing power that you need, and your sixth province is presumably slowing you down a lot more than your opponent's third colony.

*the point being that if the score is 45-43, whoever buys the last province will win; that will probably be your opponent since he has fewer green cards in his deck and presumably more platina.

TL;DR: there are exceptions, but it's pretty safe to say that without the cards lespeutere mentioned, you can avoid this strategy.

EDIT: this post did not think hard enough about the cursing problem (probably, just buy a couple platina and then province with 8 there, a three pile is more likely than provinces or colonies running out in these games anyway). Also it didn't think about GendoIkari's bridge megaturn set up, which makes sense.

[lespeutere]

Maybe if you're building a mega-turn engine of some sort, it's easier to mega-turn for 8 provinces instead of 8 colonies. That's possible.

This as well.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/20/game-20120620-152405-bb0ac67a.html

[GendoIkari]

Case in point for my Bridge post... just now finished this game:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/20/game-20120620-154420-017a8a3c.html

[jomini]

There are several scenarios for going provinces in a colony game:
1. Tournament. Colonies don't win tournaments and they don't block the peddler effect. Nabbing followers can be just that good.
2. Fast setups, particularly those that will have a hard time hitting 11 coin. Joat, Chancellor/Stash, etc. all can pile down the provinces before the other guy can start pounding out colonies on some boards.
3. Megaturns. Highway, HoP, Bridge, and a good number of other options can pile out the provinces much easier than the colonies.
4. Planned 3-pile ending. If the game is going to be easy to end on piles, then you may need to start hitting up provinces before you are ready for colonies. For instance, say you have a board with peddler, pawn, watchtower, TR, trashing. You know that peddler and pawn are both quick and easy to pile out. If you can get the buys, you can also pile the curses (using watchtower trashing) without too much effort (assuming that the TR or watchtowers aren't also options). Nabbing a province, pawn, and peddlers pushes you that much closer to end game. It can be heavily worth it to either end the game outright, or to place your opponent in a forced position (You are up by 2 - 9 points, they have to green or you end the game). This becomes extremely useful outside of mirrors. If you have the buys/gains to end it in one turn and they need two turns, you can drastically change their plans by going for a province and pushing the piles.
5. Strong TfB options. Dipping into provinces on 8 isn't so bad if you have upgrade in your deck, you bought it on 8 and can have either the VP or a delayed plat. Likewise apprentice and salvager can both use the high value, though you may just end up leaving it as VP padding. Taking an early province over a gold is not so dangerous if you have the option to get the value back out later. With a good engine, even things like develop and remodel can allow you to either get the plat or build up twice to colony.
6.  Green tolerant decks. Xroads is likely the strongest option here, but things like scout/cellar, apprentice, controlled NV "islanding", KC/scheme top decking, golem decks and the like allow you to just grab whatever green you can afford at the moment. Normally buying a province sacrifices one or more engine components, but this can be worth it and sometimes isn't so bad. For instance with haggler out you still get engine components with your provinces, going for two provinces instead of a colony/component (or a colony/duchy) works decently in green tolerant decks.
7. Alt-VP decks. Yeah colony games are not as friendly to alt-VP, but many engines choke on just a few colonies (e.g. watchtower or Jack based draw engines. If you are going to lose the colony spread, you can sometimes play for slow provinces and another source of VP, for instance fairgrounds. Getting fairgrounds to 6 in colony games isn't that hard (games are longer, you have another treasure and another VP card) and 8 is doable in a lot more situations (bane, potion, tournament). Between the provinces and the fairgrounds you can overwhelm someone who beat you to a megaturn and nabbed five colonies, but killed his engine to do it (e.g. a HoP deck). Getting 12 provinces / 6 point fairgrounds or even 14 is doable before a busted engines can be rebuilt enough to pile the colonies. Likewise, gardens and vineyards can be coupled with provinces to try to beat an otherwise insurmountable colony lead.

[Morgrim7]

I once played a heavy Goons/KC Colony game where I was too slow in setting up a Goons engine and decided to dip for Provinces. I won.

[cayvie]

I once played a heavy Goons/KC Colony game where I was too slow in setting up a Goons engine and decided to dip for Provinces. I won.

I'd really like to see a gamelog of this if you could find it.

[Morgrim7]

I once played a heavy Goons/KC Colony game where I was too slow in setting up a Goons engine and decided to dip for Provinces. I won.

I'd really like to see a gamelog of this if you could find it.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120604-172158-4b225893.html
Here.
EDIT: Wait a second...

[Asklepios]

I think the key thing here is to consider the VP totals available, and the strategies that will take you there. In other words, it depends on the kingdom. Or to be more specific, it depends on the tempo of the game, the VP sources and the expected final scores.

Broadly speaking though there are a few numbers to bear in mind when you make your assessment.

First off, 8 Provinces = 48 VP. 5 Colonies = 50VP.

Thus, if the time it takes you to get to 8 Provinces is more than the time it takes your opponent to get 5 Colonies, you lose.

Naturally its not entirely that straightforward, as even if you pursue Provinces you might be able to pick up 1 or 2 Colonies. On the other hand, you probably won't have that time, as you'll be buying Provinces instead of Platinum on those $9-10 hands, and strongly considering accelerating game end by buying Provinces on $11 hands too.

As to Tournament, I'd observe that yes, Tournaments make Provinces a lot better, but that doesn't necessarily mean the presence of Tournaments indicate that you should try and run out Provinces. Sometimes the best thing to do is ignore Tournaments. Sometimes the best thing to do is to get just one Province to activate Tournament with, and otherwise build towards an engine that will let you draw them together while you climb towards colonies.

As for fast setups, what we're looking for here is VERY fast setups: ones that will get you to 8 provinces before your opponent gets 5 colonies, and which aren't just as good at racing for 8 Colonies. The megaturn approach is probably the best one, because you get all those Provinces in one turn, so you're not committing to the risk of provinces at all. By the time you decide to end the game on them, you've ended the game on them.

Governor is the awesome megaturn enabler here - its pretty easy to get all 8 provinces in 12-16 turns with a Governor focus, and quite hard to turn Governor advantage into Colonies.

JoAT I'd be very nervous about. Yes, its a relatively fast way to 4 Provinces compared to many setups, but its not that fast to 8 Provinces. Doublejack can take 20-23 turns to get to 8 Provinces, and during that time your opponent could easily get 5 colonies, or 4 colonies and the last province. Plus a Jack approach is pretty much committing to silver-logging your deck, which while it doesn't preclude colonies makes them a lot harder to achieve.

This has all been mentioned though. Here's a few more thoughts:

In kingdoms with strong attacks that slow progress to greening, getting to colonies can take way more time than you'd expect. Mountebank games for example, tend to end on three pile, and you should probably get Provinces as soon as you're able. On the other hand, I wouldn't expect Provinces OR Colonies to run out with Mountebank on the table.

[Davio]

Note that getting 8 Provinces is increasingly hard.

Every Province buy will clog your deck more and more and since you're basically playing some kind of rush you don't have time to invest in a stable deck. This means that you will stall, hard.

While you are busy stalling, your Colony opponent is laughing hard as he buys his 5th Colony and has achieved two things:
- Get more points
- Have a better deck

[WanderingWinder]

The big danger is that if you don't get a big lead, you're helping the opponent end the game on you by running the last provinces themselves. So unless there's something specific (chancellor /stash or tact/vault maybe) I wouldn't go INTO a game planning to run provinces very often, but I might slide to it based on draws or what happens in the game.

[D Bo]

I played a game the other day where I went for provinces right off the bat because it involved Hoard and there were also Great Halls. I don't know that it was necessarily the correct strategy but it seemed to work in this instance. I will certainly admit though that pretty much every time I have a Hoard in my hand, I'm going to buy a Victory card and I'm sure there are some more experienced players that wouldn't necessarily suggest doing this. But getting a gold with a Great Hall seems like a pretty sweet deal to me.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120620-112629-6df6451c.html

Edit: Although now that I look at it, I only bought one of my four Great Halls with a Hoard, so that part did not pay off as it could have...

[Kahryl]

I once played a Colony game with Wharf, Caravan, Village where both players built a draw engine so obsessively that all three piles got low before anyone thought to buy green.. and there was a short-lived and brutal wrestling match over the duchies.

[qmech]

I played a game the other day where I went for provinces right off the bat because it involved Hoard and there were also Great Halls. I don't know that it was necessarily the correct strategy but it seemed to work in this instance. I will certainly admit though that pretty much every time I have a Hoard in my hand, I'm going to buy a Victory card and I'm sure there are some more experienced players that wouldn't necessarily suggest doing this. But getting a gold with a Great Hall seems like a pretty sweet deal to me.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120620-112629-6df6451c.html

Edit: Although now that I look at it, I only bought one of my four Great Halls with a Hoard, so that part did not pay off as it could have...

In general I'd counsel against buying Duchies or Estates early with a single Hoard (although with multiple Hoards, feel free).  Great Hall is very different, and buying them with single Hoards is fine.  The tricky case would be $6 with a single Hoard, and then it might depend on the phase of the game: early you might want another Hoard, but later a Duchy would be more attractive than a Great Hall.  There's might be a point just before the final reshuffle when your first choice would be the Great Hall; play it by ear.

Hoard is a good example for this thread.  If I hit $8 with a Hoard then I'm probably going to buy a Province.  If that happens a few times  for either player then you can find yourself in a position where it's clear that Provinces will run before you have time to get to Colonies.