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[ednever]

I think WW has said a few times that the opening dos not matter as much as you think.

I drew 5/2 on a Young Witch/Tunnel kingdom. I thought I was finished. I considered opening YW/nothing and then struggling to come back.

Instead I did Trading Post/Nothing and then picked up a YW/Tunnel on the next cycle. (I thought it would be better than doing a bad mirror and since TP is a good opening (if not great like YW/T), and it would help me kill some curses and cycle a little faster, I thought I should go for it).

It worked great.

Bane was Tunnel (first time I had seen that), so I didn't get hit with that many curses. The ones I did get I turned into silvers. So the game ended with 0/4 curses for me (with two in the trash)

Warehouse was the other key card so we both ended up with a ton of gold.

I actually think that given Tunnel as the bane the correct 4/3 opening might have been Warehouse/Tunnel instead of YW/Tunnel. But I definitely would not have thought of that at the time.

Here's the game:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/12/game-20120612-115306-98ec4ce6.html

Ed

[Tdog]

Trading post is so strong on turn 1 that's it's probobly the right opening.

[ehunt]

Reading this game made me realize what a strong opening trading post is. The point is that in the very early game, it's arguably even better than masquerade, which I think is the second-best trasher to ambassador. Both decrease your deck size by one without hurting this turn's economy, but trading post throws in a silver in place of one of your bad cards.

(Masquerade/silver is better at getting to gold on the first shuffle than trading post/x and, more importantly, is much stronger in the late game, but "not strictly superior to masquerade" is hardly a damning indict of a trading post opening.)

[WanderingWinder]

To clarify my statements, my point isn't that opening split doesn't matter as much because there's always something to do on the other split (which is certainly NOT true), but rather that even if you get the worse split in a mirror, you're by no means dead.

[DG]

Quite often being first player with a bad split provides a moderately even game. The simulator suggests that's true for this kingdom if you open young witch/nothing.

[clb]

I hve a question for the forum about Ednever's fifth turn. The general consensus is to curse early and often. It is also generally accepted that trashing is good (especially with engine decks) and that building an economy to afford the $5+ cards is a good thing. Here, Ed chooses to Trader 2 estates into a silver and buy a bane/tunnel instead of using his young witch. His opponent had his bane in hand (did you guess that, Ed?), so the YW would not have cursed, but I am curious about the broader implications. If Ed had drawn YW, Trader, Silver, copper, estate (or something else similar) where he could still have been assured to buy the tunnel if he used the YW, would the trader be the right play? I suspect there will be varying opinions, but I would like to hear your reasoning as to which move is better. Thanks!

[cherdano]

I hve a question for the forum about Ednever's fifth turn. The general consensus is to curse early and often. It is also generally accepted that trashing is good (especially with engine decks) and that building an economy to afford the $5+ cards is a good thing. Here, Ed chooses to Trader 2 estates into a silver and buy a bane/tunnel instead of using his young witch. His opponent had his bane in hand (did you guess that, Ed?), so the YW would not have cursed, but I am curious about the broader implications. If Ed had drawn YW, Trader, Silver, copper, estate (or something else similar) where he could still have been assured to buy the tunnel if he used the YW, would the trader be the right play? I suspect there will be varying opinions, but I would like to hear your reasoning as to which move is better. Thanks!

My rule of thumb here would be:
TP trashes two unwanted cards, YW gives out one.
2>1

[WanderingWinder]

I hve a question for the forum about Ednever's fifth turn. The general consensus is to curse early and often. It is also generally accepted that trashing is good (especially with engine decks) and that building an economy to afford the $5+ cards is a good thing. Here, Ed chooses to Trader 2 estates into a silver and buy a bane/tunnel instead of using his young witch. His opponent had his bane in hand (did you guess that, Ed?), so the YW would not have cursed, but I am curious about the broader implications. If Ed had drawn YW, Trader, Silver, copper, estate (or something else similar) where he could still have been assured to buy the tunnel if he used the YW, would the trader be the right play? I suspect there will be varying opinions, but I would like to hear your reasoning as to which move is better. Thanks!

My rule of thumb here would be:
TP trashes two unwanted cards, YW gives out one.
2>1

Yeah. Not to mention that the silver gain will help you in the long-run, and in the short run gets you another useful card. On top of which, it's fairly likely that his opponent is holding a bane, making the YW an even riskier play.

[ehunt]

My rule of thumb here would be:
TP trashes two unwanted cards, YW gives out one.
2>1

My feeling is actually that as far as cursing vs. trashing goes, 1 > 2 (although only slightly), which is why Sea Hag is a better opening than Remake, or why you should get +2 on turn 4 with your steward in order to buy that witch. But in this case, the silver pushes the trashing over the edge.

[Grujah]

TP is, accoring to Councilroom, best 5/0 opening (yes, better than sole Witch or Mountebank), so it ain't that big of a surprise that it could compete. Especially as you can also trash curses with it and stuff.

And yes, about Tunnel YW. I was playing in veto mode, going second. I look at kingdom, devise my strategy (I think my plan was to skip opening with YW) and ban a card that was really treating my build.
And Tunnel comes out as bane. Jeez. My whole plan was ruined, had to go YW/Tunnel. 

[WanderingWinder]

My rule of thumb here would be:
TP trashes two unwanted cards, YW gives out one.
2>1

My feeling is actually that as far as cursing vs. trashing goes, 1 > 2 (although only slightly), which is why Sea Hag is a better opening than Remake, or why you should get +2 on turn 4 with your steward in order to buy that witch. But in this case, the silver pushes the trashing over the edge.

I think the reason that you go for these curses in this case isn't so much that 1>2 as a) trashing two cards and using a third to trash them usually wastes more for YOUR economy than their one cursing card does on theirs, and b)you can't line up your trashing with the junk consistently, which is not a problem for the curser, as it has nothing that it needs to connect with.

[Kahryl]

A couple days ago I got two games IN A ROW that were Young Witch with Tunnel as bane. What's up with that?

The sad thing is I lost them both despite going into the second game with a plan already formed from the last.

[ednever]

I definitely did not guess we was holding a bane. I remember hesitating on that turn, but it wasn't that hard a decision.

-2 estates, +1 silver, +1 tunnel definitely beats giving a curse and maybe picking up a tunnel

On the more general question on killing two cards vs giving one curse, I think i would take killing two cards almost every time.

Say you somehow drew:
Hag, remake, cursex3

I think remaking the curses would be better than playing the hag. But it would depend on where the deck cycles were, the size of the curse pile, and a few other considerations.

The reason hag generally beats remake as an open is as WW described; if you could guarantee rm would line up with 2 estates and/or curses everytime it came up, it would likely beat hag, but that's not going to happen.

I played a game earlier today where I ignored the hag due to what I thought was an effective trashing option (remake and trading post I think on a 3/4 open). I didn't work, but it was damn close (my opponent made a comment, something along the lines of, "I'm actually rooting for you with that strategy"). The log isn't up on cr yet, but I will look for it tomorrow.

Ed

[cherdano]

My rule of thumb here would be:
TP trashes two unwanted cards, YW gives out one.
2>1

My feeling is actually that as far as cursing vs. trashing goes, 1 > 2 (although only slightly), which is why Sea Hag is a better opening than Remake, or why you should get +2 on turn 4 with your steward in order to buy that witch. But in this case, the silver pushes the trashing over the edge.

If you think about this comparison, you will see how unfair it is:
- Remake leaves you a 2-card hand to play with, see hag a 4-card hand.
- Remake doesn't always trash a curse, most of the time it trashes copper which aren't bad cards.

I promise, if you added "draw 2 cards" before the trashing to remake, it would be the strongest card in the game. Nobody would even consider opening sea hag instead of remake.

[carstimon]

Funny enough, this 5/2 happened to me just a couple of days ago:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120612-082047-4cb4d470.html
and I got pretty soundly beaten by silk roads.  I tried vault/courtyard which I think was a mistake- too much terminal draw!  I think I also should've gotten fewer grand markets.

And here's another time this happened, and I'm a little embarrassed about my opening:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120117-152357-fb2af84e.html
courtyard/IGG/(NOT young) witch.  Again, I got too many terminal draws, and that witch isn't useful with the tunnels.  I think at this time I didn't think tunnel/yw was great.

P.S. Is it ethical to steal these threads with my own games?

[Wingnut]

The 5/2 draw with YW/Tunnel seems to happen quite a bit (Trading Post is great there and is really good on a 5/2 no matter what).

Of course there is the question of what you do if you're second player, you draw 5/2 against YW/Tunnel, Ambassador is on the table too and there are no cost 5 cards (except duchy of course). Yes, this actually happened. http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120518-064044-6fa15bb8.html

[blueblimp]

The 5/2 draw with YW/Tunnel seems to happen quite a bit (Trading Post is great there and is really good on a 5/2 no matter what).

Of course there is the question of what you do if you're second player, you draw 5/2 against YW/Tunnel, Ambassador is on the table too and there are no cost 5 cards (except duchy of course). Yes, this actually happened. http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120518-064044-6fa15bb8.html

Ouch, not only Ambassador, but Caravan/Ambassador.