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[mgallop]

I was playing a game vs a lower ranked player today on Iso and the board was pretty boring but there was Venture and Embassy so I decided to go big money, whereas he went some really odd strategy involving lighthouse, golem, workshop and explorer. So I expected to just nonchalantly crush him, but somehow things went pear-shaped, I didnt get the 4th province until turn 15 or win until 19 and there were a number  of turns where if my opponent got 8 he could have won (notably turn 17 and 18.)

Was this a case of me snagging a province too early (took one with first embassy draw on t5) instead of buying a gold or venture? Do I want venture over gold in this type of deck? Anyway, I'm not sure what went wrong and would like some insight.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/09/game-20120709-221349-734f80f6.html

[Dsell]

I definitely think you want a second embassy instead of the first venture and I think you need to get some gold or at least more money before you start buying provinces. IMO, 2 embassies is no problem because you want to play it as many times as possible and collision is minimized because you have to discard anyway. You bought two provinces before gold. Embassy decks are resilient to greening but they need money. Definitely the first province should have been gold. The turn 8 province probably would have been ok if you had bought gold, but you still don't have any! 19 turns seems quite slow to get 5 provinces+duchies with embassy.

tl;dr:
At least one gold before provinces
At least 2 embassies before ventures

[ftl]

Not sure. Embassy can be pretty luck-dependent when you have just one - did it miss reshuffles?

You played it on turns, 5,8,13,16, and all four of those turns you bought Provinces. So that worked. You only got one province on a non-embassy turn all game, unsurprisingly I suppose. You reshuffled on turns 2,4,5,8,9,12,15,18. So it missed a few reshuffles, it's to be expected, it's Embassy.

I never remember whether sims support a second embassy or not. I think so, given how well this one worked out, a second would have been a good idea. For some reason my simulator isn't starting right now, I should redownload it, it's been a while.

[ftl]

Yeah, checked sims. You want two embassies, take the second one over a Venture. They'll collide early maybe, but if they don't, they're amazing, and even if they do, Embassy handles collisions pretty okay, it's a sifter. And if you get even two more plays out of it all game, it'll be worth it.

Still, even with both of those changes, according to the sim that would get you only an extra few percent chance of winning. It pretty heavily depends on the shuffle luck of when you draw Embassy.

[DG]

Golem/lighthouse is quite good. The rest of your opponent's deck is inadvisable but it still has a lot of content by the finish. You should taken a gold instead of the turn 5 province.

[mgallop]

Thanks for the advice, just had another game where the best strategy was clearly BM Embassy, and getting 2 embassies more early gold worked way better (4th by turn 12, 5th by 15), though partly I had ridiculous luck avoiding embassy collisions. I was right to just ignore him getting an early noble brigand because that card is not good/fast enough to slow me down, right?

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/10/game-20120710-065250-16d04ef2.html

[HiveMindEmulator]

You definitely want 2 Embassies. Collision is not a big deal, as you can usually buy a Province anyway. It's a much bigger loss to have to go 4 turns without drawing an Embassy if your single Embassy falls late in the shuffle. Having 2 really reduces the chances of that occurring.

In general, a turn 5 Province is too early, but in pure Embassy BM (where you open Silver/Silver), I think it's fine. There is a reasonable chance that that Gold won't ever make a difference, because Embassy buys Provinces just fine on a mass of Silver and Copper. So Gold only helps if you draw it on a non-Embassy turn with $5 more. And you need this to occur at least once just to make up for the skipped Province.

[gman314]

Here's a game where I used BM Embassy and it worked quite well.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120619-102149-ddad25aa.html

It's quite possible that I got lucky, because I got my first Province before my second Embassy, and got my second Province before my first Gold. Also, my opponent's strategy was interesting to say the least.

However, this was pure Embassy BM and I had 3 Silver before getting my first Province and 4 Silver when I got my second Province. Having Silver can really help Embassy BM because the sheer draw power helps you get to $8 at least as much as adding in a bit of Gold does. In my game I had 4 Provinces after turn 10.

tl;dr:
Silver helps Embassy BM a lot.