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[sffc]

Forge is one of my favorite cards to play in Dominion.  When you have a Forge in your hand, you look at your cards differently: in addition to counting actions, buys, and draw power, you now also need to add up card costs.  Rather than playing a Rabble, maybe you could forge that Rabble with a Quarry (and a couple Coppers while you're at it) to get a Platinum, et cetera.  Unfortunately, Forge has one of the lowest win rates among the Prosperity cards.  So, I thought I'd share a neat little Prosperity-only combo that shows off some of Forge's power.

In order for Forge to be anything more than an expensive Chapel, you need to have cards whose total costs add to something useful.  In a Prosperity game, there will probably be Colonies on the board, and so you need cards whose costs add up to $11.  Unfortunately, this is not always the easiest thing to accomplish, and you will usually be stuck with forging whichever unrelated cards you happen to draw with the Forge.  It would be great if there were 2 types of cards in our deck whose costs added to $11 that we could just keep forging into Colonies.

Enter Hoard.  Hoard's most obvious purpose is to keep your big-money deck running into the late game, by counteracting that victory card you just bought with some coin.  But, this is not Hoard's only strength.  If you can muster $5 with a Hoard, if you buy a Duchy, you gain a Gold.  Guess what: $5 + $6 = $11, exactly the combination that Forge needs!  So by buying a hoarded Duchy, you automatically get the fuel you need for your Forge.

My Council Room search didn't yield any games that demonstrate this combo, but I played this combo in a face-to-face game yesterday and prevailed.  Forge is a difficult card to simulate, but based on what I got out of the simulator, this combo seems to work best when there is a helper card to get Forges early in the game (no later than the third reshuffle), especially if it costs $5: Vault and Rabble are two examples.

It's not clear that mixing Hoard and Forge is enough to beat a fast King's Court / Grand Market deck, but, in my opinion, it is a whole lot more fun to play.

[Powerman]

The problem with this is... what are the chances that you draw your Duchy AND your Forge AND a Gold?  Basically only if you draw most of your deck.  And if you can draw most of your deck... you don't want to buy the Duchy anyway... you'd just want to go Colony + Gold.

Forge's best use is off of a big hand (say Tactician), forging a LOT of cards (say 4 coppers 3 curses and 2 estates) and getting one card instead.  Perhaps there is something here... but I don't see anything, sorry.

[jomini]

Hoard/forge could work if you have some strong sifters or an engine. Though, I actually think the combo (I have not tried this) would work better in province game - forge away your deck, have just a hoard, buy an estate, forge E + G -> Prov.

[sffc]

Forge decks tend to be tight; if you can get 1 forge by the third reshuffle and another 2 by the fourth, you'll have 3 forges eating away at your deck.  Once you get it down to 15 or so cards and have done the Hoard/Duchy (or Hoard/Estate) purchase 2 or 3 times (a reasonable proposition by turn 13 or 14), there should be a high probability that you do indeed draw the Forge with a Duchy and a Gold.  I'm not exactly sure about the math behind it, but it seems like it should be something along the lines of:

Code: [Select]

Assume your deck consists of 3 Forges, 3 Duchies, 3 Golds, and 6 of something else (including Hoards).

Frequency of drawing Forge, Duchy, Gold, X, X = (3 nCr 1)(3 nCr 1)(3 nCr 1)(12 nCr 2) = 1782
Total Combinations: 15 nCr 5 = 3003
1782 ÷ 3003 = 59%
I wrote a little simulation that drew 5 random cards from the deck 1,000,000 times, and that gave me 33.26%.  (Here is the code I used.)  Also note that you can forge Hoards instead of Golds in the late game, so the combo probability is going to be even higher than this.  Either way, it seems that you have a pretty decent chance of drawing the combo at lest once per reshuffle, and if you use the turns that you don't draw the combo to buy more hoarded Duchies or Estates, then you're golden.

[Powerman]

Forge decks tend to be tight; if you can get 1 forge by the third reshuffle and another 2 by the fourth, you'll have 3 forges eating away at your deck.  Once you get it down to 15 or so cards and have done the Hoard/Duchy (or Hoard/Estate) purchase 2 or 3 times (a reasonable proposition by turn 13 or 14), there should be a high probability that you do indeed draw the Forge with a Duchy and a Gold.  I'm not exactly sure about the math behind it, but it seems like it should be something along the lines of:

Code: [Select]

Assume your deck consists of 3 Forges, 3 Duchies, 3 Golds, and 6 of something else (including Hoards).

Frequency of drawing Forge, Duchy, Gold, X, X = (3 nCr 1)(3 nCr 1)(3 nCr 1)(12 nCr 2) = 1782
Total Combinations: 15 nCr 5 = 3003
1782 ÷ 3003 = 59%
I wrote a little simulation that drew 5 random cards from the deck 1,000,000 times, and that gave me 33.26%.  (Here is the code I used.)  Also note that you can forge Hoards instead of Golds in the late game, so the combo probability is going to be even higher than this.  Either way, it seems that you have a pretty decent chance of drawing the combo at lest once per reshuffle, and if you use the turns that you don't draw the combo to buy more hoarded Duchies or Estates, then you're golden.

Who buys 3 Forges... ever?

[sffc]

Who buys 3 Forges... ever?\

Um, maybe people going for pure Forge decks?

As I said in the OP, Forge is a fun card to use and build a deck around.  It's not always the most competitive route, but it gives a new perspective to Dominion.

[michaeljb]

I think I'd need to see a few example game logs to be convinced that 3 Forges is ever a good idea

[dghunter79]

Who buys 3 Forges... ever?

You don't buy them, you Forge them.  I once Forged four Forge/Hoards for Geordi La Forge