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[werothegreat]

Just played a game with Nobles, Silk Road, Fishing Village, Ghost Ship, and Saboteur.  We both opened Ghost Ship, of course (5/2), but in the course of the slog, I got tired of him GSing me every turn (he bought more than I did - I was focusing on the Fishing Villages), so I picked up a single Saboteur.  I trashed his Ghost Ships.  I trashed a Fishing Village, a Nobles, a Silk Road.  A single Saboteur was ripping holes in his deck, and his victory points.  But he didn't pick up one of his own.  If he had, he might have beaten me.  For all the bad press Saboteur gets, it's very effective.  Have any of you won using Saboteur, or been on the receiving end of it?

[Wingnut]

Here is a game where I got torched that shows both the good and bad of Saboteur.

My opponent picks up an early Sab and proceeds to Oracle, Nobles, Silver, Nobles, Worker's Village and then finds the Sab useless because he is playing his Highway's first and I have nothing in my deck that Sab can hit after 4 Highways.

I pick up one and of course hit nothing of importance and then a couple of turns after his Saboteur becomes useless I hit that too and my way to a 3-pile defeat.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120619-192427-3fe9e19a.html

[Kuildeous]

Sometimes Saboteur is a trap, but it can be brutal.

I played a multiplayer game where one player was falling behind. She decided to use a Saboteur to level the playing field. One of my King's Courts got hit by the Saboteur. Okay, fine. I replaced it with a Saboteur of my own. What was painful for the other players was that I already had a decent engine going. Adding a Saboteur to the mix meant that I was able to play a Saboteur probably every other round, and some of those were King's Courted. The initial instigator lost her Saboteur fairly early to mine. But, once I had one, I had to keep playing it, laying waste and ruin to the other decks.

I generally do not enjoy playing Saboteur, as that makes a game less friendly, but I really didn't like losing my King's Court and was afraid of what else I was going to lose to it.

That game was actually made worse when the other players realized they played it wrong. They thought it affected cards with a cost higher than 3, so they actually were destroying their more expensive cards and leaving the Silvers (not really sure if that makes Saboteur worse or nerfs it a little).

[rrenaud]

I think theory's article is still pretty much right on.  http://dominionstrategy.com/2010/11/29/intrigue-saboteur/

Also, supply win does a good story.  Sab is much better with KC, and it's better with potions (alchemist -> nothing is HARSH).

http://councilroom.com/supply_win?&targets=Saboteur&interaction=true&nested=false&unconditional=true

[qmech]

I think theory's article is still pretty much right on.  http://dominionstrategy.com/2010/11/29/intrigue-saboteur/

Except for the CLASSIC BLUNDER: never go—wait, no, that's the other one—you don't gain from your opponent discarding bad cards from your deck, because the cards you lose are, on average, slightly better than a random selection from your deck.  It's this problem with the modification that, because we're drawing from a finite deck, successive "births" are increasingly likely to be "boys".

Saboteur can be effective when your opponent has Chapeled down and relies heavily on a single card, such as Minion.

[LastFootnote]

Saboteur can be effective when your opponent has Chapeled down and relies heavily on a single card, such as Minion.

Or when your opponent is depending on having a certain number of a specific card by endgame, like Duchies and Dukes.

[blueblimp]

Except for the CLASSIC BLUNDER: never go—wait, no, that's the other one—you don't gain from your opponent discarding bad cards from your deck, because the cards you lose are, on average, slightly better than a random selection from your deck.

Good point. This is the same situation as Venture.

Really I think the best situation for Saboteur is when your opponent doesn't want Silvers (well or other massable $3's). If they do, you'll hit a bunch of Silvers with your Saboteur, which is a waste, and they can turn their $5's and Golds into Silvers, which then you'll need to hit again later to fully destroy.

Even on boards ideal for KC-Saboteur craziness, I have problems using it successfully because if the opponent is ahead in VP, it's fairly easy for them to 3-pile on Duchies, Estates, and something else.

[werothegreat]

Except for the CLASSIC BLUNDER: never go—wait, no, that's the other one—you don't gain from your opponent discarding bad cards from your deck, because the cards you lose are, on average, slightly better than a random selection from your deck.

Good point. This is the same situation as Venture.

Really I think the best situation for Saboteur is when your opponent doesn't want Silvers (well or other massable $3's). If they do, you'll hit a bunch of Silvers with your Saboteur, which is a waste, and they can turn their $5's and Golds into Silvers, which then you'll need to hit again later to fully destroy.

Even on boards ideal for KC-Saboteur craziness, I have problems using it successfully because if the opponent is ahead in VP, it's fairly easy for them to 3-pile on Duchies, Estates, and something else.

Which is why you don't let them get ahead. 

In any case, Saboteur can be helped by cards like Spy and Scrying Pool, so you know what you might be hitting.  Oracle not so much, since they'll know there's a Saboteur coming and can arrange their top-deck accordingly.  Spy is also good with Swindler, perhaps better, so you never Swindle a Peddler into a Province.

[iangoth]

Saboteur is really only effective when you can hit your opponent's cards as fast or faster than he can replace them. The obvious way to accomplish this is with a strong engine (*cough* king's court), but if there is a lack of +buys, or if key cards are irreplaceable, like cities or minions once the pile has run out, one saboteur played frequently is still pretty strong. You probably want to slow down the game as much as possible since the damage you do is cumulative and meanwhile you'll be lagging in buying power (every sab in hand could've been at worst a silver. King's court sab? you probably could've king's courted a terminal silver for $6).

Here are a few games I dug up from my history (Sorry, I cherrypicked games where I win. They're the ones where I clearly understood what was going on and wasn't just experimenting/screwing around):

Here's a colony game where my scrying pool/festival/saboteur deck causes my opponent playing BM + mine to ragequit. I think scrying pool is something of a saboteur enabler because a) having saboteurs in a scrying pool deck doesn't hurt your buying power so much since you draw them "for free," and b) scrying pool gives you some control over what cards you sabotage. Silver on top? Discard it, since trashing silver isn't a big deal. Province on top? Leave it there and destroy it.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120610-052035-3a8bcf46.html

In this game I have some bad luck with YW bane and lose the city split 4-6, but with my better trashing and a single saboteur, I knock out four of my opponent's cities.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120613-214232-35514452.html

Here's an old game I don't really remember and probably didn't play very well, but it looks like a decent example of saboteur as a desperation tactic. I get the dreaded and highly improbable single copper-potion-3 estate hand on turn three of a university/golem game. I'm behind most of the game, but among other things, I hit two colonies and a province with the saboteurs.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120316-114326-d71f79f0.html

In this game my opponent (an excellent player, by the way) plays a throne room/stables/smithy/hamlet/saboteur engine against my simple BM + smithy/apprentice deck. He hits me hard, four times per turn for a few turns, but some late-gained lighthouses and the apprenticing of my provinces let me run out the province pile before he can totally destroy my deck. I think his strategy would've been devastating had it not been for the endgame acceleration apprentice provided.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120619-124650-eb76ce05.html

[Davio]

Even when you get hit a lot it can be skippable.

In this game I get hit 15 times and I hit my opponent (with a Jestered Sab) 1 time. I still won.

The presence of $4 VP cards can have quite an impact. Gold -> Island in the end game is probably more useful than Gold -> Silver.
Kind of like having a bunch of $4's in a Governor can be good defensively.

[verikt]

rabble-sab or fortune teller-sab or highway-sab also make good combos

[werothegreat]

By the way, here's the link to the log of the game I played - I didn't get the log immediately after playing, so I had to wait a day for councilroom to post it.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120620-102940-1e528fce.html

[Stealth Tomato]

I think theory's article is still pretty much right on.  http://dominionstrategy.com/2010/11/29/intrigue-saboteur/

Except for the CLASSIC BLUNDER: never go—wait, no, that's the other one—you don't gain from your opponent discarding bad cards from your deck, because the cards you lose are, on average, slightly better than a random selection from your deck.  It's this problem with the modification that, because we're drawing from a finite deck, successive "births" are increasingly likely to be "boys".

You have it backwards. Because you will eventually run out of bad cards/girls, there is a cap on the number of bad cards/girls per Saboteur. Therefore you are going to hit more good cards than bad! Girls = boys only because there is a small chance of a near-infinite number of girls from one family.

[pingpongsam]

Dang, I was looking for this thread to post this in. since I couldn't find it and made my own thread it got considerably more verbose than as originally intended.

[qmech]

You have it backwards. Because you will eventually run out of bad cards/girls, there is a cap on the number of bad cards/girls per Saboteur. Therefore you are going to hit more good cards than bad! Girls = boys only because there is a small chance of a near-infinite number of girls from one family.

Is this what I said?

the cards you lose are, on average, slightly better than a random selection from your deck.
 

[Morgrim7]

Have any of you won using Saboteur, or been on the receiving end of it?

Unfortunately, yeah. I played a game against a relative, (a long time ago, before I was on f.ds, and before I knew the truth about the card) and I built this sab deck, which crushed my opponent. Not only did it warp her impression on the card (along with scaring her to death of it), but it warped mine as well. Now I know the truth. ish.

[WanderingWinder]

Played a tie with I think PSUMVP today that was a major sabfest. Hmmm... felt I ought to have won, too... Though it was really interesting, he said gg after buying the 1st province, which confused me, 'cause I felt basically won, then he didn't resign... I dunno what was up, because I consider it poor form to gg when you think you'll lose and not resign, but worse to prematurely gg when you think you're winning, though the game couldn't have been over either way, and he's always been a probremless, nice opponent in the past, so while confused I def give him the benefit of the doubt.

[Kuildeous]

Played a tie with I think PSUMVP today that was a major sabfest. Hmmm... felt I ought to have won, too... Though it was really interesting, he said gg after buying the 1st province, which confused me, 'cause I felt basically won, then he didn't resign... I dunno what was up, because I consider it poor form to gg when you think you'll lose and not resign, but worse to prematurely gg when you think you're winning, though the game couldn't have been over either way, and he's always been a probremless, nice opponent in the past, so while confused I def give him the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe he didn't mean "gg" as in "that was a good game," but "gg" as in "good game so far."

[WanderingWinder]

Played a tie with I think PSUMVP today that was a major sabfest. Hmmm... felt I ought to have won, too... Though it was really interesting, he said gg after buying the 1st province, which confused me, 'cause I felt basically won, then he didn't resign... I dunno what was up, because I consider it poor form to gg when you think you'll lose and not resign, but worse to prematurely gg when you think you're winning, though the game couldn't have been over either way, and he's always been a probremless, nice opponent in the past, so while confused I def give him the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe he didn't mean "gg" as in "that was a good game," but "gg" as in "good game so far."

I have never ever seen that.

[Kuildeous]

Maybe he didn't mean "gg" as in "that was a good game," but "gg" as in "good game so far."

I have never ever seen that.

Me neither; I was just throwing it out there, but I suppose it's possible. If someone doesn't know the ins and outs of Isotropic conversation, he may be taking "gg" literally.

In that regard, it could have lots of uses.

Before a game begins: gg? [is this a good game to play?]
During a game: gg [Oh, this is a good game.]
After a game: gg  [Wow, that was a good game.]

I don't know the guy, so I can only defend him so long. He might not have known what exactly he was saying when he prematurely typed "gg". Like you, I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

Or, I suppose we shouldn't rule out that he's a white supremacist who mistyped "hh," but that possibility is far worse than the possibility he was being arrogant.

[Tombolo]

It shut me down pretty well the other day!

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120624-233904-afb0e013.html

[chwhite]

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/25/game-20120625-213241-91fd6e8b.html

Trash: 4 Saboteurs, 6 King's Courts, 5 Ambassadors, 19 Silvers, a Province, a Navigator, 5 Cities, 8 Tacticians, and a Gold.

That's really all you need to know.  Well, that and it took 34 turns.  Saboteur may be easily-ignorable 80 percent of the time... but then sometimes you have games like this.  Ow.

[rrenaud]

Trash: 4 Saboteurs, 6 King's Courts, 5 Ambassadors, 19 Silvers, a Province, a Navigator, 5 Cities, 8 Tacticians, and a Gold.

You wanted to play Dominion, but you got Mortal Kombat instead.

[werothegreat]

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/25/game-20120625-213241-91fd6e8b.html

Trash: 4 Saboteurs, 6 King's Courts, 5 Ambassadors, 19 Silvers, a Province, a Navigator, 5 Cities, 8 Tacticians, and a Gold.

That's really all you need to know.  Well, that and it took 34 turns.  Saboteur may be easily-ignorable 80 percent of the time... but then sometimes you have games like this.  Ow.

I love how your opponent was left with Pearl Divers and a Tactician.  "Yeah, got a superturn!  And... it's all... pearl divers.  ;_;"

[PSUmvp]

Played a tie with I think PSUMVP today that was a major sabfest. Hmmm... felt I ought to have won, too... Though it was really interesting, he said gg after buying the 1st province, which confused me, 'cause I felt basically won, then he didn't resign... I dunno what was up, because I consider it poor form to gg when you think you'll lose and not resign, but worse to prematurely gg when you think you're winning, though the game couldn't have been over either way, and he's always been a probremless, nice opponent in the past, so while confused I def give him the benefit of the doubt.

My apologies...  It may have seemed (or actually been) after my prov buy.  However it was at that moment that I realized you had all of the Sabs left.  I agree with everything you wrote about and I was fully intended to resign.  You had out Sabbed me and should have won.  After saying gg, I had a last minute thought to try and pile it on estates...  Even when I was buying Provs, I knew they would be estates by the next turn with KC +Sab combo.  No disrespect meant, I definitely thought you had me and got very lucky to pile enough estates for the tie.