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[biodiesel]

My first game with Alchemy cards.  I saw Vineyard, Ironworks, and Cellar in the supply, and figured it would be a Vineyard race.  There were no +buy cards, but Ironworks and Horn of Plenty gave a workaround for that.  My opponent decided to go for a draw strategy, with Laboratory and Cellar.  He started off really strong, acquiring 4 Provinces before I had bought any VP cards. 

He started buying Duchys after that.  I'm not sure if he was following the Penultimate Province Rule, but I had not bought a single treasure card beyond my turn 1 HoP, so I was clearly not competing with him for the Provinces.  I think I may also have been slow buying Potions and then Vineyards, but fortunately, his deck started clogging up and bought me some time.

I had 28 action cards at the end, making my Vineyards worth 9 each.  I threw in some Estates for good measure (because I lost track of my score).  I wonder if HoP/Cellar was my best choice for an opening, and I wonder if I should have lost because my opponent misplayed his strategy by panicking early.  He even bought a Vineyard at one point, perhaps thinking to deprive me of them.  Game log below.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110815-194037-036738f6.html

cards in supply:

Cellar,
Farming Village,
Feast,
Horn of Plenty,
Ironworks,
Laboratory,
Moneylender, 
Remake,
Tribute,
Vineyard

Default card selection was used.
----------------------

#1 wtttw: 70 points (7 Vineyards [28 action cards] and 7 Estates); 24 turns
       opening: Horn of Plenty / Cellar
       [56 cards] 10 Ironworks, 9 Cellars, 8 Farming Villages, 7 Vineyards, 1 Remake, 7 Coppers, 7 Potions, 7 Estates

#2 SKJ: 53 points (6 Provinces, 4 Duchies, 3 Estates, and a Vineyard [6 action cards]); 24 turns
     opening: Cellar / Laboratory
     [33 cards] 3 Laboratories, 1 Cellar, 1 Farming Village, 1 Remake, 1 Vineyard, 6 Coppers, 2 Silvers, 1 Potion, 4 Golds, 3 Estates, 4 Duchies, 6 Provinces

[DG]

You were right to see the potential for a good vineyards deck here but the lack of an extra buy prevents it from being a certain winner. Ironworks is probably a better opening than the hall of plenty as it provides other useful cards quickly. Laboratories and cellars are a good combination here for any strategy so if your opponent had continued along that good line he might have won.

There are quite a few ways to play this set to be honest. One alternative would be to use a moneylender or remake to shrink the deck, collect a variety of +action cards (labs, cellars, farming villages, etc.) and use them to cycle a deck containing horns of plenty. Use the horns of plenty to gains labs and then cash in the horns of plenty late in the game for provinces: lab, cellar, farming village, moneylender, tribute, gold, silver, horn of plenty make 8 different cards for a province. Ironworks and feasts could feature too.

[biodiesel]

Yeah, I thought about Ironworks/Cellar as an alternate opening.  I didn't get a whole lot of use out of HoP, except mostly to pick up Cellars.  I felt like at the mid-game point, I would have lost if my opponent just started buying out the piles that I was working on, instead of trying for more VP cards.  He gave me a lot of time to catch up and surpass him.

[WanderingWinder]

For future reference, please don't dump entire game logs into a forum thread. Posting a link is enough.
As for the game itself, I think Ironworks/vineyards is almost a shoo-in to be the dominant strategy here. It is on most boards where there are a couple other sub-4 actions, as those vineyards get brutally powered up pretty quickly. The HoP strategy for provinces that DG is talking about could potentially beat this, but on first blush, it strikes me as likely too slow. So I woulda gone for Ironworks/Vineyards here, probably grabbing an early couple of potions at convenient moments, then depleting Ironworks ASAP (while buying vineyards at every opportunity), and only then moving on to gaining other stuff. Cellar works there in a pinch, like when you have $2, but I'd probably try to aim for farming villages and then maybe later transition into some feasts. Your opponent shouldn't have deviated for duchies, but Labs don't go all that great with BM anyway, so I don't think it woulda made THAT much difference.

[biodiesel]

Yeah, posting the entire log seemed like a bad idea, but that's all I had.  I didn't think to save the link to it.   

[Deadlock39]

Council Room has a pretty handy search feature.

http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110815-194037-036738f6.html

[ackack]

So I woulda gone for Ironworks/Vineyards here, probably grabbing an early couple of potions at convenient moments, then depleting Ironworks ASAP (while buying vineyards at every opportunity), and only then moving on to gaining other stuff. Cellar works there in a pinch, like when you have $2, but I'd probably try to aim for farming villages and then maybe later transition into some feasts.

I think grabbing every Ironworks before getting Potions is usually best. The main argument I see for getting Potions earlier is if you think that the game will end too quickly or your opponent is going to move for Vineyards himself. But conceding all of the Ironworks is a great sign that's not going to happen, and then you can be gaining actions and Potions every turn. Once I had 10 Ironworks, I'd switch over to gaining Actions with Ironworks until I was down to 1 in hand, and then gaining a Potion (if I'm set to average a Potion a hand I'd just gain another action instead) to finish each turn. I agree that once you have Potions, buying the Vineyards at every chance is best, and I also agree that this is probably the strongest strategy on this board.

[WanderingWinder]

So I woulda gone for Ironworks/Vineyards here, probably grabbing an early couple of potions at convenient moments, then depleting Ironworks ASAP (while buying vineyards at every opportunity), and only then moving on to gaining other stuff. Cellar works there in a pinch, like when you have $2, but I'd probably try to aim for farming villages and then maybe later transition into some feasts.

I think grabbing every Ironworks before getting Potions is usually best. The main argument I see for getting Potions earlier is if you think that the game will end too quickly or your opponent is going to move for Vineyards himself. But conceding all of the Ironworks is a great sign that's not going to happen...

Yup, that's my argument, and I don't think that 'conceding all the ironworks' necessarily means that that's out of the question. You may well be right here, because I don't have basically any data or a whole lot of expeience, but I find that one of the hardest things in a vineyards deck is, you know, actually slowing down to buy the vineyards. And the main problem with waiting so long is that you need to get a lot more potions, because once you have 10 ironworks + 10 starting cards + a few other actions + maybe a couple other cards like silver that you had to when you couldn't manage $4, you've got like 22-27 cards without the potions. Add in 3 potions, and assuming they don't ever collide (they probably will once), it's going to take another 12-18 turns to actually get all the vineyards. And that's with 3 potions, which is probably more than I'd want to get ideally.

[ackack]

But when Vineyards are worth 9-10 VP per, you don't even need all of them to be nigh unbeatable in a Province game. Plus being the one sitting on the huge pile of Ironworks means that usually you're the one in control of when the game actually ends. This game and this game are examples of how this might look.

Also, 3 Potions is definitely too few. Averaging about 1 per hand should be the goal when you make the switch. Potions are bad for buying other things, but when you have a massive stack of Ironworks and are gunning for Vineyards, that's really unimportant compared to making sure you're getting Vineyards fast.

[WanderingWinder]

I disagree that you want so many potions, though again, I'm not totally sure here. But neither of those games are good examples, in the first case because of the chapelling which REALLY accelerates this kind of deck, to the point where I'd undoubtedly cop to your position, and in the second case because your esteemed opponent flounders around. A LOT. To the extent that he only got 2 provinces in 19 turns. So you more or less had a free hand.