Topic: Opening Village (Read 8088 times)

heatthespurs · « **on:** August 22, 2012, 02:18:46 am »

Often I hear people saying that opening Village is a bad idea, as the village does not give you anything until at least your 2nd reshuffle. (Let's assume there is only the plain village on the board... so no fishing, hamlet, mining, etc.)

My question is: is it always true that opening village is bad? Let say you are going for a Torturer engine, you'll need some villages soon or later. So buying 1 in the first 2 turn might save you from needing to spending 5 for a village later on. Could this kind of concern be strong enough to justify opening village?

More generally, is there any circumstance that you may open with a plain village?

engineer · « **Reply #1 on:** August 22, 2012, 02:30:01 am »

Quote from: heatthespurs on August 22, 2012, 02:18:46 am

Often I hear people saying that opening Village is a bad idea, as the village does not give you anything until at least your 2nd reshuffle. (Let's assume there is only the plain village on the board... so no fishing, hamlet, mining, etc.)

My question is: is it always true that opening village is bad? Let say you are going for a Torturer engine, you'll need some villages soon or later. So buying 1 in the first 2 turn might save you from needing to spending 5 for a village later on. Could this kind of concern be strong enough to justify opening village?

More generally, is there any circumstance that you may open with a plain village?

If you bought a silver instead of that village, you have a greater likelihood to pull $5 to buy another torturer on turns 3-6. Even if you do end up having to spend $5 on a $3 village later on, you're better off. After all, you probably have $5 because of the silver you bought on turn 1-2, and if you'd bought a village instead of that silver, you'd only have $3-$4 to spend now -- and, by the way, you'd have to spend that cash on a silver, because you do need to buy money for that type of engine.

In other words, overpaying for a village on a later turn is better than overpaying for a silver on a later turn because the silver is more useful in your deck early on.

blueblimp · « **Reply #2 on:** August 22, 2012, 02:31:12 am »

If Peddler is available, Salvager/Village might be an alright opening.

ftl · « **Reply #3 on:** August 22, 2012, 03:11:44 am »

Yeah, if peddler is available, opening with village is plausible, may or may not be optimal depending on what the other choices are.

Maybe if you were building a Poorhouse engine and had no reason to need cash early, opening Chapel/Village might be faster trashing than chapel/anything nondrawing? That's speculation, I haven't played such games with Dark Ages yet.

methods of rationality · « **Reply #4 on:** August 22, 2012, 03:31:24 am »

while its not exactly a plane village, I open shanty town on a torturer engine, and on allot of other engines too. Bc once you have a torturer, village or shanty town is better than silver since you don't need silver to buy a second torturer, your draw from torturer will do that. And b4 you get the torturer, your shanty town is a lab.

qmech · « **Reply #5 on:** August 22, 2012, 04:35:20 am »

Peddler has already been mentioned, but then you'd take most cantrips if there was also a source of Buy (Worker's Village being perhaps the best option). Village/Bridge is also reasonable if you're heading for Vineyards. Fishing Village is often better than Silver, and I agree with MoR that Shanty Town can be reasonable for the draw.

def · « **Reply #6 on:** August 22, 2012, 07:43:33 am »

Walled Village/Ambassador into a second Ambassador.

Jfrisch · « **Reply #7 on:** August 22, 2012, 08:19:19 am »

shantytown/fishing village are fine openers. As for the other (non-dark ages, again, don't really know them) villages they tend to be rather weak openings. Basically it's fine to overpay for a village and less fine to go into rounds 3/4 with only 1 3/4 cost.

werothegreat · « **Reply #8 on:** August 22, 2012, 08:25:10 am »

If I know I'm building an engine with lots of parts, I may sometimes open Village. For example, on the First Game board, I alternate between opening Militia/Silver, Militia/Village, and Militia/Workshop.

DStu · « **Reply #9 on:** August 22, 2012, 08:36:01 am »

Quote from: werothegreat on August 22, 2012, 08:25:10 am

If I know I'm building an engine with lots of parts, I may sometimes open Village. For example, on the First Game board, I alternate between opening Militia/Silver, Militia/Village, and Militia/Workshop.

Yepp, I think if you build an engine does not need $5s (urgently), than you also can open Village. On First Game, I think I would prefer WS for the start, but replace WS with IW in the set and I probably would take the Village for $3. Edit: Or Cellar?

DG · « **Reply #10 on:** August 22, 2012, 08:47:33 am »

I think you are mainly looking at situations where
(a) you are gaining cards rather than spending high to buy cards
(b) there are good cheap cards you are happy to have in quantity, maybe village itself
(c) deck cycle speed is important, so much so that you don't want to add a single silver
(d) the deck can make good use of the starting cards or trash them out
(e) action cards are specifically required by the deck (vineyards, conspirator, peddler, anti-pirate)

The most publicized case will be the first example game from the Dominion rulebook. Open remodel/village and gain smithys using remodel on estates (a), buy moats and villages and cellars to supplement them (b), draw through the deck quickly to remodel more slow cards into fast cards (c), use the starting coppers to buy gold once you can draw the whole deck (d). A key feature is that all the key cards are at cost 3 and 4, attainable through card gaining or spending coppers. This actually turns out to be quite rare since the power cards are often at cost 5 or more.

Archetype · « **Reply #11 on:** August 22, 2012, 03:04:48 pm »

I'll occasionally open Farming Village or Shanty Town if its a heavy cursing game. Though I won't open Farming Village if the Curser is Sea Hag.

Robz888 · « **Reply #12 on:** August 22, 2012, 04:52:43 pm »

No one said it yet, so I'll say it: Mining Village, for immediate trash and slingshot to an early Forge or something.

jonts26 · « **Reply #13 on:** August 22, 2012, 04:57:45 pm »

Other villages which might make good opens now include bandit camp and squire.

As for when you might open vanilla village, peddler, maaaaybe vineyards and little else I would say.

popsofctown · « **Reply #14 on:** August 22, 2012, 04:58:22 pm »

Maybe in a bridge deck?

WheresMyElephant · « **Reply #15 on:** August 22, 2012, 05:02:37 pm »

If we're listing these, also Festival and possibly Bazaar sometimes.

ftl · « **Reply #16 on:** August 22, 2012, 05:12:36 pm »

Guys, the original question was about vanilla village.

There are plenty of times where you might want to open Festival, duh.

Here's a potential one - a 4-player game in which there's an engine deck to be made and the only Village is a vanilla Village. But the other components are not going to run out. I'd consider opening Remake/Village in some case like that.

Jive Junkie · « **Reply #17 on:** August 22, 2012, 09:28:28 pm »

There may be engines which really hate having non engine-parts mucking around in the deck. In the absence of good trashers and in the presence of good virtual money, I'd imagine it could be OK to open something like Baron / Village, if you're going for a crazy double Baron deck that wants to draw the whole deck every turn, or at least draw 1 Village, 2 Barons, and 2 Estates. In this case, each Silver gained may get in the way of the combo, however dubious the combo may be.

For most normal engines that need 5-6 cost parts, it seems good to start with two cards that either gain you money (Silver / terminal + $), trash, or attack, simply because it increases the odds of getting your key 5 and 6 cost parts (like Goons) sooner or disrupts your opponent.

PSGarak · « **Reply #18 on:** August 22, 2012, 11:28:40 pm »

Quote from: Jive Junkie on August 22, 2012, 09:28:28 pm

There may be engines which really hate having non engine-parts mucking around in the deck.

I would consider opening Village/Conspirator if I intended to build a Conspirator deck, because Silver tends to slow those down. On the other hand, if Village is the best $3-cost non-terminal, I might not build a Conspirator deck.

Lekkit · « **Reply #19 on:** August 23, 2012, 03:27:28 am »

At last year's WM someone opened Farming Village/Fortune teller. That was in the finals. It was also made by the guy who crushed all resistance and won.

petrie911 · « **Reply #20 on:** August 24, 2012, 02:45:05 am »

When Village is the Bane, Village/YW seems viable.

ycz6 · « **Reply #21 on:** August 24, 2012, 10:51:56 pm »

Quote from: Lekkit on August 23, 2012, 03:27:28 am

At last year's WM someone opened Farming Village/Fortune teller. That was in the finals. It was also made by the guy who crushed all resistance and won.

Actually kinda makes sense. In a multi-player game you're much more likely to be hit by a Fortune Teller before your turn, meaning Farming Village is basically a Level 2 City. Sort of.

RisingJaguar · « **Reply #22 on:** August 24, 2012, 11:06:43 pm »

Yeah very slim cases. Other then the peddler cases, vineyard cases (there needs to be methods to gain because one silver isn't horrible).

The other case I would include is for conspirators (probably would have no trashers to make this reasonable as silvers would slow conspirators down).

paulbaxter · « **Reply #23 on:** August 26, 2012, 09:04:31 am »

Quote from: Archetype on August 22, 2012, 03:04:48 pm

I'll occasionally open Farming Village or Shanty Town if its a heavy cursing game. Though I won't open Farming Village if the Curser is Sea Hag.

I had to think about that one for a minute before I got it

Piemaster · « **Reply #24 on:** August 27, 2012, 03:24:54 am »

In short, opening Village is always bad except for the times when it isn't

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