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[Razzishi]

Obviously if you want to play Gardens you're not going to be getting a Chapel.  But in the thread on "must-buys" some people have stated that Chapel isn't nearly as a must-buy as many people believe, and that they often looking for alternative strategies on Chapel boards.  In what sort of occasions will this occur?  I have played one Chapel game where neither player went for them: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110703-073852-8028f3d9.html.  This game was somewhat fast, ending in 15 turns, and features Envoy openers from both of us.  However, many games with Chapel have ended just as fast; one game ended in 13 turns after both sides used Chapel.  I'm willing to think that we were both liked the acceleration of Envoys over the cleaning power of Chapel, and thought that they did not work very well together due to the very high chance of them colliding.  However, I have 2 other games with Chapel and Envoy of which I won both and played Chapel and not Envoy, so am thinking that it's perhaps not a good reason to ignore Chapel.

I am no losses on record in which I bought Chapel and my opponent did not.  I have 3 such wins, one of which was against WW: http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110709-090801-ba75d140.html.  In that game he went with almost a straight Bishop strategy, and so my Chapel had much less work to do; it was trashed to a Bishop on turn 8 after effectively trashing 5 of my opening cards (it actually trashed 6, but I could have trashed one of those to a Bishop).  I finished trashing my starting cards to WW's Bishops turn 10 while he still had 4 Coppers and an Estate.  I had been hitting him more often with Witch, and used Quarry to quickly pile up Grand Markets before buying 2 Provinces per turn on turns 15-18.  So while I understand how going Bishop-heavy precludes Chapel and that my opponent was helping me trash, I still cleared a lot of junk out of my deck and had an easy way of getting rid of the Chapel.

Anyone have some good situations and sample games showing how Chapel can sometimes be ignored?

[Reyk]

WW names one in his Hunting Party Post:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=14.0

Other examples could be Philosopher's Stone (with or without gardens). Maybe Alchemists.

I'm not sure you would always abandon Chapel with Gardens in mind.

[WanderingWinder]

Generally Bishop simply beats chapel. The reason it wasn't the case there was because the witches were pumping extra clutter into my deck. Masquerade is also almost always going to be a good option against a chapeller, and there are various other cards, including even thief, which dissuade slightly from chapelling.
But there are lots of things that are faster than chapel: envoy or smithy decks if the chapel doesn't have support being among them, militia decks fairly often as well. But the other big issue with chapel decks is that they can clog up rather easily once they green, and if you get extra golds to stop this from happening, then chapel is slowed down a lot. Actually, chapel/money is not so much better than straight-up big money. Chapel needs some support to be strong - but the vast majority of boards have that support.
Generally though, chapel is good, but dedicated strategies or combos can beat it. So hunting party decks, Native Village/Bridge, big time action-heavy decks which can be set up pretty quickly - though in this last case, and in many others where you should skip chapel, it's for some other trasher which fits in better with your later-game plans.

[tko]

Apparently Quarry->Grand Market > Chapel in this case.  Though I will add if one strategy appears to be superior, and beats a case 60% of the time, 40% will happen enough.  Would you have a picnic if 40% chance of thunderstorms?

[guided]

It's not really a matter of "looking for alternative strategies": Chapel just isn't the be-all end-all of improving every possible deck. It's an excellent action-chain enabler, but not every board lends itself to big action chains. There are even some action engines that simply don't need fast early trimming to be maximally effective -- Torturer engines come to mind off the top of my head. And Chapel completely sucks against cursing attacks.

[ARTjoMS]

Realistically it is only province game where garden strategy is standout.

One could make a case about province game, being 2nd player, 4-3 split and opponent opens militia. Although militia games tend to give 1st player bigger advantage than normally anyway. But no other kingdoms, really.

What i wanted to say is that, if you really know how to use trimmed deck, chapel is pretty much a must buy.

[guided]

if you really know how to use trimmed deck

One key point of advanced Dominion strategy is recognizing when you don't want to trim your deck. It's a more common situation than a lot of players seem to realize.

[chwhite]

IMO there are more or less four reasons to ignore Chapel:

1: Gardens with strong support (obviously)
2: Ambassador- the vast majority percent of the time, when Ambassador is out you need to focus on winning that war.  Amb/Amb, while high risk, arguably gives you the best chance of doing so.
3: Remake- on boards with spammable $3 cards, I'll gladly trade a little bit of trashing tempo for those extra Fishing Villages and Menageries and such.
4: Masquerade- not as good a pure trimmer, but more than good enough for Treasure-heavy setups, and also a strong, un-Reactionable attack against super-trim decks. 

I'm sure there are a couple other corner cases.

[DG]

To cut to the chase - If you can get to 5 provinces faster without a chapel than with a chapel then don't buy the chapel. We all know that you can have good decks without chapels so I don't why we go blind to those other decks when the chapel appears on the table. Not only are *all* trashing cards a viable alternative but playing without trashing at all is a viable alternative.

As an example - If you start baron/warehouse and buy a bank, tactician, and a few other bits and pieces, then you'll probably have a good deck without a chapel. You don't need to trash anything, just score massively on tactician turns using the starting cards and good partners. If you start with the chapel/baron then you might get into trouble either keeping estates for the baron or putting enough treasure cards in your deck to get value from a tactician or bank.

[HiveMindEmulator]

As we learn to play dominion, we go through several phases regarding chapel. Initially, we ignore it, since it's a $2 card and we usually have more than $2 to spend and we want to squeeze all the "value" out of our money. Or we only use it to get rid of curses or something since why would you want to trash anything else? Then, someone in our play group discovers that if you trash all your starting cards, you can actually make your deck a lot better. Then we love it and buy it every single game. Then we over time start to realize that it's not really that good all the time. It is one of the best cards if you're trying to build some sort of engine that requires a high density of specific action cards, because it gets rid of the fluff, but if you're just buying money, chapel big money is worse than straight-up big money. You spend your first few turns trashing, run really smooth for a brief period of time, and then choke on green cards and end up losing by a couple estates to the guy who just has a ton of silver which allows him to have a better money density than you.

The important point is that chapel enables some good strategies, and is not itself really the backbone of any strategy. It is the single best trasher in the game. But trashing is not a strategy in and of itself. It's an early-game tactic which leads well into specific kinds of mid-games. I think guided hit it on the head: you shouldn't think of chapel as a default opening and think of "alternatives". You should be aware of its presence when you choose a strategy and be more willing to play strategies that require heavier trashing. Probably 80+% of the time the best strategy will be one that uses chapel's trashing. But sometimes there are no really good action chains to be made, due to lack of villages, +buys/gains, or something else, and there are fast no-trashing or lighter-trashing strategies that can get half the provinces just as fast (while having an advantage in estates).

[WanderingWinder]

...but if you're just buying money, chapel big money is worse than straight-up big money. You spend your first few turns trashing, run really smooth for a brief period of time, and then choke on green cards and end up losing by a couple estates to the guy who just has a ton of silver which allows him to have a better money density than you.

The important point is that chapel enables some good strategies, and is not itself really the backbone of any strategy. It is the single best trasher in the game. But trashing is not a strategy in and of itself. It's an early-game tactic which leads well into specific kinds of mid-games. I think guided hit it on the head: you shouldn't think of chapel as a default opening and think of "alternatives".

Beginning of your post: good. End of your post: good. This middle part: wrong. Chapel money has been shown to be better than straight-up money, just not much better. And most strategies without chapel are aided by throwing one in, just not the overwhelming majority of them.

[guided]

Chapel + Big Money beats 100% pure Big Money by a thin margin (a few percentage points), and that's if the Chapel strategy is specifically tuned against the actionless Big Money strategy. This is interesting but not of much practical use, since there is pretty much always some single action card you can buy to significantly improve upon pure Big Money. To pick a very simple example, in a hypothetical 2-card Kingdom consisting of nothing but Chapel and Smithy, Smithy is going to absolutely cream Chapel.

[ARTjoMS]

To pick a very simple example, in a hypothetical 2-card Kingdom consisting of nothing but Chapel and Smithy, Smithy is going to absolutely cream Chapel.

Yes, chapel+big money<<smithy+big money, but your statement is false.

[guided]

but your statement is false.

Oh?

If you're making some cheeky comment about how the board also needs to contain treasure and victory cards, you're not being clever. "Kingdom" refers to the Kingdom cards, not the standard Victory, Treasure, and Curse cards used in every game. Perhaps you're thinking of the "Supply".

[ARTjoMS]

No, you just forgot to mention that player who buys chapel is forbidden to buy smithy.

[guided]

No, you just forgot to mention that player who buys chapel is forbidden to buy smithy.

I did not forget that. Are you asserting that Chapel/Smithy is better than Smithy alone? Perhaps it's possible, but I would be very surprised.

[Razzishi]

Thanks for the replies.  I'm not really sure how many of these things I was aware of previously because I would almost snap pick-up a Chapel in the opener without even thinking.  I had assumed that it was such a fast and cheap way to scour your deck of cards that there would be very little reason to not purchase one, as I tended to see many of my games while starting out seem to be decided by the level of early trashing.  I failed to realize previously just how much the greening of the deck will affect a heavily trashed deck.  I am beginning to understand now that the games I have played are not necessarily the best examples of how Dominion games "should" go, and that despite how much I've learned about the game there's still a lot more to be digested.

[ARTjoMS]

No, you just forgot to mention that player who buys chapel is forbidden to buy smithy.

I did not forget that. Are you asserting that Chapel/Smithy is better than Smithy alone? Perhaps it's possible, but I would be very surprised.

What i have observed from solitaire games is that if you know when to buy smithy, know how much to trash, then these are close strategies. Using ''absolutely cream '' is really far from truth i believe.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Quick simulations show Smithy beats Smithy/Chapel around the 70% - 30% mark. Changing the buy rules for Smithy/Chapel to buy the Smithy only after some trashing has been done doesn't really change anything.

[guided]

Quick simulations show Smithy beats Smithy/Chapel around the 70% - 30% mark. Changing the buy rules for Smithy/Chapel to buy the Smithy only after some trashing has been done doesn't really change anything.

I did some solitaire testing just now, and this should be a pretty good set of heuristics:

-Buy Smithy the first time you have $4-$5 after turn 4 (buy Silver instead at turn 1 to 4)
-Save Silver and 2 Coppers (instead of trashing either of the Coppers) to buy your first Smithy if you don't have one after the 3rd shuffle
-Always play Smithy if you have it in hand (exceptions to this based on situation-specific knowledge will be rare and would be complex to express)
-Otherwise, apply the usual Chapel/Big Money trashing rules (e.g. save a single Copper in any given hand to buy Silver, save up to 3 Coppers to buy Gold)
-Use the usual rules about when to buy Duchies and Estates

Major parameter to tweak in simulation: how many shuffles before you start preferring your first Smithy to a Silver?

Still, I didn't get the impression this was competitive with a standard single-Smithy strategy.

[rod-]

In chapel games, I usually make my purchases based on the "total non-copper buying power of the deck"
In practice, that's silver silver "hope you're lucky enough for gold but maybe 3rd silver" gold (then depending on #of silvers 2nd gold) then once BP>=8 start working on engine/drawing power.

3rd shuffle seems too soon to me for a smithy - it takes around 5 shuffles (they happen quite quickly in chapel games) to get the deck reasonably clean.

[Thisisnotasmile]

I tried simulating with a Smithy/Chapel opening, not buying Smithy until you have 0 Estates in deck, not buying Smithy until you have less than or equal to 3 Coppers in deck, and not buying Smithy until you have 0 Estates and less than or equal to 3 Coppers in deck. All came out with a 70-30 split in favour of straight Smithy.

Delaying the Smithy buy until you have cleaned out all 10 starting cards drops it to 75-25.

Buying the Smithy after you have at least 1 Gold (and can't afford Province or Gold) splits 57-36 with some ties. Still in favour of Smithy on its own but we're getting close.

[painted_cow]

I must say its a interesting thought of avoiding chapel in non-heavy-garden setups. I didnt think, that I tried it in other scenarioes at least once to avoid chapel.