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[catsclaw]

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/11/game-20120611-163957-d2e6a4e6.html

I had a better strategy than my opponent, I think, but my opponent managed to grab most of the Villages early, and then hit his monster turn first.  Did I start greening too soon?

[eHalcyon]

Just looking at the early turns on the log, it looks like you were the one buying villages early.  He opened Silver where you opened Village.  That allows him to reach the power cards more quickly and easily -- Goons, and Labs for draw support.  With his Quarry, Goons lets him pick up Villages easily when he needs them (as well as more Labs and Goons).

You don't need Village early when you don't have many terminal actions.  Goons is the terminal you want to focus on, so Envoy is not a good match there (especially since it can dead draw your Moneylender and Villages).  They might be worth picking up later, when you have adequate Village support.  But Goons first!

[blueblimp]

Regarding greening, taking a glance at this kingdom, this is the sort of kingdom where I'd never want to green at all. Why go for a Province over a Laboratory? It's only 6 points, and that lab may set up a multi-Goon turn, which will be worth more.

Regarding Villages, they are often the limiting resource for Goons mega-turns, because if you have only k Villages, you can have at most k+1 Goons in play, and less than that if you need some actions to draw. You don't need nearly so many Envoys, especially since Lab is available, so they are less urgent. Your opponent correctly identified this and on turns 7 and 9 prioritized Village over Envoy, while meanwhile on turn 8 you bought an Envoy. That said, as second player, splits tend to go badly.

Your Village opening was suspect, though. Keep in mind that opening Village does nothing for you on T3/T4, since you only have a single terminal. Getting the first Goons play is important in Goons games, and opening Silver should help with that. If you had opened Silver, then on T3 you can get a Lab instead of a Quarry, and on T4 you probably still have $4 and can get the Quarry then instead of the Envoy (which is what your opponent did for T3/T4). Still, both you and your opponent got first Goons plays on turn 8, so to some extent it's just your bad luck to go second in this game.

[blueblimp]

Another thing I see now is how huge the Labs could have been for you. On turn 15, you buy Province and Expand, then on turn 16 Province and Lab. Your opponent proceeds to buy out the last three Labs on turn 17. If you had bought Labs instead of Provinces and the Expand, you would have had 6 Labs to his 4, which is pretty great.

The copper buy on turn 14 also seems premature. In a Goons engine game, you don't want those coppers until the game is VERY close to ending (close to the point where you don't think you'll get a chance to reshuffle again!).

[carstimon]

Edit: this post exactly echos everything above it.

Here are the things I would have done differently.

Turn 2 village:  This isn't gonna help you in your second shuffle (turns 3/4).  It's better to get the silver to try to get goons or laboratory earlier.
Turn 4 envoy: I really don't like envoy here.  Reasons:
-Sure, there are villages, but you're not going to have that many extra actions, even if you split villages 5/5.  You really want to be able to spend actions on goons if you're going to be making a goons engine.
-This is especially important early.  Say you do hit village envoy, but then your envoy draws your goons.  You don't get to play your goons.  It's really important that you play your goons, to slow your opponent down and probably for the +buy.  Early on, you're not going to have enough goons that you can throw them away once in a while.  (This point is mitigated by the fact that envoy draws a good portion of your deck, so it does speed you through)
-Lab is available as a source of cards.  Sure, it's more expensive but combined with the above points it's a much better option.
Turns 14, 15, 16: Buy labs here.   Hitting 3 goons together is more important than getting provinces or copper-vp at this point.  Turn 15 there are still (at least) 4 laboratories left: you need them.  You could have bought them turns 15 and 16.

[ednever]

I was surprised neither of you opened Quarry.

Quarry is one of the best Goons enablers. It's even better than Gold, since you will likely not be buying anything other than actions, and you have extra buys. I would open Quarry/Silver or maybe even Quarry/Village.

Then just buy:
$3 Village
$4 Quarry (for at least 2, maybe 3, then Envoys)
$5 Lab
$6 Goon

When you have extra buys use as many as possible buying the highest combination of those four cards you can (i.e., if you have $4 and played a Quarry and you have 2 buys, pick up a Lab and a Village). Adjust as your draws cause your mix to shift too far out of focus and/or what your opponent is buying (i.e., if you can lock your opponent out of one of those four cards you should do so).

You definitely don't want green in this deck unless you have to to stop your opponent from winning (which sometimes happens in Goons mirrors). It's too easy with this set to get a super-mega Goons turn, so you don't want to buy copper (ever) until you can win it, or you need to create a buffer to stop the other guy from ending it on his turn.

Ed

[ednever]

Also:
Why did you resign? You still had a shot at a mega-turn didn't you? (Even on the hand you resigned with)

As far as I can tell there were two empty piles and three Goons left. Not a huge chance, but not impossible to pull this one out. Especially if you started greening.

Ed