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[zahlman]

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201211/05/game-20121105-001837-1c1c2577.html

I mean, you're supposed to win the Ambassador war when you take 2:1 Ambs and have a Village and don't have an early terminal collision, right? But somehow he kept managing to hit 4s and 5s early, get the right ratio of Villages and $5 attack cards, and build an engine that let him play the one Amb consistently while also getting in Mountebanks and Rabbles, which already quickly prevented me from consistently Amb'ing back. Is there anything I can do once he gets any momentum?

I'm starting to get really, REALLY annoyed at games that seem to boil down to "whoever hits $5 first wins". Especially when seemingly logical defenses just don't work.

[dondon151]

Your turn 8 buy should be a Mountebank, which hurts more than Rabble, improves your economy, and reduces your chances of drawing things dead. Once you start getting cursed, I think it's better to still return 2x Copper over 1x Curse whenever possible to prevent yourself from getting inundated by crappy cards (keeping Curses also helps to defend against Mountebank, for whatever it's worth).

Your turn 9 draw is some really bad luck.

[-Stef-]

In an Ambassador game, it's always a question whether to add some power soon or go for a clean deck full force.
In general, going for a clean deck full force is better. But here I'm in doubt. Mainly because Mountebank also puts a lot of junk in you opponents deck, and the power cards get really powerful once you get there.

But I do think it is important to chose, and stick to your choice a little bit more then you did.

* If you want to clean out asap (and you did), then why not open double ambassador here? Even if you don't reach $4 on your next run for a village, you'll probably still pick up a haven or two to make clashes less annoying. Having peddler in there may very well make this a viable strategy. You can afford to go really low on money.

* If you don't want to go full force for a clean deck, you need some way to reach $5 quickly. The best plan for this is off course to have incredible luck as your opponent did. After adding an ambassador and a dead village, he managed to ambassador 2 estates, get a haven and a $5. For those of us not using bizarre luck, I think you should sacrifice your mining village on turn 4 to also get a mountebank.

* Accepting your turn 4, as pointed out by dondon, you should keep the curses and get rid of the coppers. I think this one is very important. If your plan is to clean out, any turn you don't draw a curse to block that mountebank is horrible. Once again going very low on money is viable due to peddler.

---

Your opponent is really lucky with his early mountebank. Although strategy is an important factor in dominion, a minority of games just are determined by a good/bad luck freak like this one. Better accept it or it gets really frustrating.

[shark_bait]

Another thing to consider with the double Ambassador opening, is that if you pick up a couple Havens, you can ignore ambassador collision and pick up cheap Peddlers as a way to bootstrap your economy without sacrificing your ability to keep your deck thin while mucking up his.