Loooooooooooooooong write-up on my semi, as there aren't going to be in-game play videos. I think I will try to also make videos of me going through the logs to supplement though. Anyway, here's this (and again, feel free to move it):
Game 1: Here is the gameplan: in a 2-player or 3-player game, the engines will run absolutely rampant here - it is a GREAT engine board. But this is 4p, and I don't expect the game to last very long. Furthermore, since my opponents are also all going engine (which was pretty evident from the start), I can expect them to play a million margraves every turn. While this hurts me some, it also is not SO bad, because I can filter to something that is pretty close to my best 3-card hand all the time. So I think Hoard is very important to get here, because it will give me high money variance, which ought to be good with the filtering their margraves give me. I want a margrave or two myself, because it's just a good card, good card for money too, and then I want to blitz the green. Especially being fourth player, probably one of the engines will nip me anyway, but there's not a lot to do about that. I consider opening shanty town (someone needs to work out the shanty town/silver opening probabilities) but decide against it for two reasons. First, I think that silver/silver helps me be more likely to actually hit 6, and hoard is I THINK better than margrave for me here, though I do want both (also, ST should make it a little more likely to get 5, but if I get bad enough luck to miss 5 on silver/silver, I figure I'm probably toast anyways). Further, I think it will be SLIGHTLY less useful in the long term for the deck. I THINK.
Okay. Toaster and zxcvbn2 both open ironworks. I am very dubious of this decision. Sure, in a 2 player game, it might be ok. You want to grab lots of stuff, particularly FVs, for your engine. Actually, with KC and so many villages, I don't actually think I like the play there either. Here, though, it must be a pretty clear mistake. I mean, the you aren't really going to get more fishing villages this way than just buying them, with so many players (even moreso if I went with their plan also), and moreover, the game will be over too fast, and the ironworks are a bit slow.
allfail goes FV/Shanty town. I am not sure on this. Mostly, it's the shanty town. It labs you early, but an early lab isn't so great - the cards it draws are not so good, though I guess it does cycle you. The question is how likely does it make you to miss $5. I think decently likely, though most often you should still get it? But getting to 5 is MASSIVE here for that deck. Further, you have this shanty town which may not be so useful later on. Or it might be. But sometime, you're going to need cash.
Turn 3, toaster gets silver - I think I would have preferred FV. zxcvbn gets FV+FV, but I think I would have considered silver off the ironworks, then buying margrave (FV next turn). He has very little chance of getting a margrave this shuffle, the way he plays it. allfail get the perfect draw of FV on 3, so it doesn't miss the shuffle, and exactly $3 off his shanty town hand, meaning nothing is wasted here. I also get a very good draw for my hoard (though I wouldn't say that this isn't
terribly lucky -
it happens 42.4% of the time off a silver/silver opening!, not to mention that margrave is not so much better than hoard for me here - it's generally preferrable to get margrave before the first gold, even on $6, if hoard isn't around; actually, I'm not 100% that it's better to hoard than margrave even on what I draw).
Turn 4, and both toaster and zxcvbn can't get margrave. For some reason, allfail doesn't get a border village with his margrave. Not sure whether this was an oversight, or a strategic play against later opposing margraves/pile endings. But probably an oversight - especially with the shanty town and in the engine he wants to build, the BV must be a boon. I only get $2, which is a bit unfortunate - I don't expect this haven is actually going to be so good in my deck, and I'm not totally sure I even want it. But I think I do. Silver would have been much better though.
After EVERYONE gets a margrave turn 5, they all also get margraves turn 6, whereas I'm stuck with... another haven. They continue to build their engines up, but fortunately, my margrave comes up turn 7, and even off my 3-card+haven hand, I am able to snag the first province and a gold to boot off my hoard. The lead is big for me, because eventually their decks will be better, if the game doesn't end first.
And now the margraves start REALLY hopping. zxcvbn is the first to KC, but I get hit with SO many margraves, that I play mine again on turn 8, and I'm able to get another province with Gold. I feel pretty good about my position at that point, though I think I thought my most probable finish was 2nd.
And here the play becomes sort of scripted, they all play out their engines, I get to keep some good cards and buy something fairly decent. As in turn 9, I margrave, province/gold combo AGAIN. Even with getting attacked so much, this is pretty good fortune for me, of course. Oh. I should mention, the FVs are gone, the margraves down to 1 already, and I'm looking for potential piling options, though the next lowest is haven which get down to like 5.
They start to consistently province around here as well, just in time for me to get a dud hand - nothing better than haven, copper, silver. I store my silver away and buy... an estate, which could certainly be real important in the end, and can't hurt me much. allfail is charging hard, with the best engine of the other three, and double provinces on turn 11, putting him within striking distance. zxcvbn isn't doing so badly either. And on turn 12, allfail can't get his KC or harvest, and after some thought, ends the game a point behind me. I had the province on my next turn, and of course, being 4p, I had fewer turns than all of them anyway. So I don't feel like I really stole this one, though it's true that with a bit of a better draw, one of them (especially allfail) could easily have capitalized on their turn advantage and won.
Game 2: The fool's gold game. Truth be told, there's just sort of a power vaccuum here. There's not that much else to do. I have the 1p advantage and intend to use it. If all four of them follow, I probably 'win' the split, and they can't expect to be in better position than me. If 2 follow (as happens), then I probably win the split and actually have a decent number of FG. If only one follows, I get a really nice amount of FG for what will likely be a short game. And if none follow, well, I ought to be golden. Also 4 players means a lot of chances to use the reaction, in all likelihood. Furthermore, salvager is really good to pair with FG, as well as being a good front-running card.
Now, three people follow me, which sort of surprises me actually, and one goes remake/silver. I am not sure, but maybe silver/silver into stables is better, given the context? It's hard to say. Salvager/silver also has a shot. I actually think he has a pretty good shot though, being the one and only contrarian.
Anyway, I win the split 4/3/3, which is good - probably a little better than average, but it has to be the most expected, being 1p. zxcvbn gets an early stables and mediocre remake luck. allfail turns 4 into a mining village, whereas toaster prefers a remake (don't like that play, but maybe it's ok?).
Turn 5 allfail and I get stables, zxcvbn gets a pretty good kick to finish off remaking his estates, gaining 3 silvers in the turn to boot, and toaster is able to trash an estate and copper AND get a stables - pretty good luck all for the last two, okay for us first two, but we do have unmatched FGs in there.
Then the beginning of turn 6 stuff starts to happen. I drop estate #2, getting another stables, and then allfail is able to match his two FGs left with 3 copper, getting a province without needing to trash his MV. After some thought, I decide to give up my 3FG hand for golds, thinking they'll be good in the long run, particularly with salvager and farmland out. But it's not the easiest call ever.
allfail is then able to stables into ANOTHER province on turn 7, and I feel in pretty bad shape. Of course I end up playing both stables (on coppers at least) in my hand with 3 golds, and end up with salvager, 3 copper, 3 gold, about to reshuffle. I can quite double province, but it would take me salvaging one gold, farmlanding another to province, and (perhaps wrongly) I think this will leave me too crippled. So I just salvage a copper and grab province and silver. allfail follows up by saccing a mining village and salvaging a gold (which he'd just top-decked off my provine buy) to get another province (I cash in my last FG as well), and I feel in... not great shape. And the other two are grabbing provinces also at this point.
Then allfail and I have dud hands - I turn $4 into a great hall, seeing the game ending soon, and allfail instead chooses to grab a mining village with his rather miserable draw of 4 copper and a salvager. zxcvbn gets another province, which allfail uses to turn his last two FG into gold. I am not sure about this decision, as it gives him exactly nothing right now, and the game is about to end. On the other hand, it does give him a good hand after, which he could use to likely smash down another, perhaps conclusive province.
Turn 10 I again get three golds together, with my salvager, (and two copper) and... I think I make a definite mistake here. I sac a gold and buy province and duchy, but maybe it's better to hold a gold back, farmland it into province, and buy a duchy, for two more points? I was worried about my economy prematurely collapsing. But as luck as it, allfail has his total dud, and the other two get remaining provinces number 4 and 3, so the game is ending like right away. I have two of the three golds left (I had three, not two, at that point - on of them gets trashed here, and I end up with 2 after that), along with 3 copper, which is enough to farmland one into a province, giving me a 6 point lead over allfail. Well, this is a pretty good thing for me, above average for sure, but on the other hand, there are lots situations that are even better, revolving entirely around salvager, where I either can get a duchy rather than farmland or get both provinces (trashing one of my existing ones in the process most likely), ending in an outright win.
Fortunately enough for me, allfail is only able to buy the last province, and nothing more, to tie, not giving zxcvbn a chance to overtake (which he may well have) on an equalizing turn, and making my earlier mistakes not hurt too much.
Game 3:
The Young Witch game. Not really a good game to go last. I even consider going haven/haven here, but after toaster buys a cutpurse, that's scuttled. Probably bad anyway. Well, the thing is, haven is a pretty good bane, but it's really apt to miss reshuffles. And also they run out FAST. So I see a 3-pile ending happening on curses, havens, and... something. I also see huge curse slogs happening. There is so much going on here, I'm not going to make as in depth comments. If you want that, tune in to the videos I'm going to make of the logs. It's just a lot to type.
In brief: I like my talisman buy, I get pretty good luck, especially on the curse front. zxcvbn gets golems but ends up not having much in the way of actions to go with, and I think repeatedly makes mistakes by playing havens before young witches on golem choices. toasters ghost ships are... pretty well just bad in such games, I think. I mean, not TERRIBLE, but they do not have all that much of a devastating effect, as we are used to. And even with FV, forget about an engine in this slog. The cutpurses hurt, but you can't have enough haven cover to make YW not hurt more. I repeatedly get pretty lucky to nab exactly 8 and provinces, but I think I played fairly well anyway. I have enough of a lead that I consider trying to manipulate game-end timing to try to get allfail not in 2nd (I feel zxcvbn has a stronger long-term deck than him), but I don't have enough to really feel comfortable avoiding duchies enough. zxcvbn ends on the same number of points as allfail, but with an extra turn, so a place behind. WEll, you can argue that he should have waited to try to get 2nd, as he's pretty clearly ahead of toaster, so there's basically no danger there, but on the other hand, he also has pretty darn small chances of actually passing allfail, with only 1 duchy left, so I can't really blame him too much.
Game 4: There is a lot of talk before this game. Somehow zxcvbn and/or toaster don't even realize I haven't clinched yet. They're totally out of it, and I have a 4 point lead over allfail AND own the tiebreak, so basically he needs to win with me getting last (or tie for first with me getting last, or get outright first with my tying for 3rd/last) for me not to advance. He jokes that everyone should collude against me, and I argue back to just play normal. Well, I don't think it was serious anyway, and even less think that the other two were actually going to do that. allfail has 1st here, but I have 2nd. I have sort of 2 goals, and I only need to actually hit one of them. Get first, or make sure allfail doesn't. He thinks for a long time before making his first move here, while this joking around is going on, and he says something to the effect that he wants to take the similar strategy to me, so that he can stay close? Well, I don't understand it exactly, and if that's what he actually means, I really don't understand it strategically. Maybe he was trying to take a psychological ploy and make me play differently from him. I don't know, but I basically played what I thought was overall straight best. Which is to play the luck game and go familiars. The big decidign factor, or
a big supporting factor, anyway, is the presence of philosopher's stone, which should help me in the long run. I am also very prepared to rush VP (and tunnel is out too) if need be, to make sure I don't get last. Not last = I win. Anyway, everyone opens potion/silver, except allfail, who goes for baron.
And right off the bat, he gets a province. Now, I'm not actually sure how good a luck this is - I tend to think that this early, gold is better. But it is the fast-ending 4 player game, and with an impending curse slog, there may not be many more chances. Also, tournament is on the board. Well, I rather stupidly get a tournament after this happens for him, and right afterwards, I kick myself. I mean, I thought tournament ought to be good, because it's just a peddler, and nobody's getting provinces... like ever, right? Because normally I don't think tournament is very good in 4p - too many other people to block. Well, I luck out and this ends up not really hurting me. But I do think baron was way better for me there.
Moreover, I get extremely lucky, in that I get familiar on turn 4. And 6. And 8. Meanwhile, the two other guys with potions fail to hit until... turn 9. Heck, allfail ends up giving more curses than the two of them combined, off two plays of followers.
Now, governors are in play, and everybody rushes them. I don't know that this is so great here as it usually is, because there's like no chance to actually chain them very well - it's hard for anyone to get so many, and the decks are filled with junk. And when you can't chain them, governor isn't so great of a card.
I load up on baron after my initial probably-a-mistake of getting a tournament. This is really good here, I think, for a few reasons. People playing governor for draw lets me connect them, I can defensively trash them, and the gaining estates is actually really good for me - it's some points, and I can run them out, espeically in conjunction with allfail's followers, and since the governors end up actually emptying pretty fast (I snag the last one more to empty them than anything else), I am sitting pretty. But mostly it's down to my huge cursing advantage. Somehow, my greenstorm combined with the curse cloud actually gets me ahead of allfail, which is peachy great, but that wasn't really the point in my mind - the point was that I was miles from last.
A couple more overall notes. First, I got pretty darn lucky. I did not play perfect, but I think I played fairly well, too, though. I am most proud of game 1. allfail played well too, and also got decently lucky. The others I veel played a touch worse and got a touch worse luck, but it's not normally enough that they should be getting 3rd and 4th EVERY time. So, the completely huge nature of the gaps in the results is artificially large, for sure. There was not all that much differentiation.
There was a little bit of a note with me turning off allfail's point counter plug-in, without asking. Well, I had thought about this after the playoff, and I knew that I wanted to turn it off no matter waht. I find it extremely rude to ask permission to do something and then NOT abide by the answer, but I was turning the thing off no matter what, so I didn't ask him. Probably it would have been better had I told him that I was doing it before I did, but oh well. Didn't think of that in the 10 seconds between noticing it was on and actually disabling it.