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Heavy mining almost loses to minions, too close for comfort

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Corpsified:
So THIS is a game I just played. I looked at the kingdom and decided that even though I would usually play minions here (i have an unhealthy obsession with minion decks) that this time I would try mines in a colony game because gold>plat just seems so good. Early moneylender into mine with lots of treasure buying was working out great, adding festivals and markets as well. Pretty soon though his minion engine kicked in and started really slowing me down. I think, in hindsight, that tactician was the answer here, but for some reason it didn't occur to me at the time. Instead I bought a few courtyards and just pressed on hoping for the best.

It worked out in the end, but not by much and I feel like I got a little lucky to win tbh. Do you all think tactican would have solved the problem and led to an easy win? Should I not even have attempted mining in the first place?

One further thought/question, I got a little skittish about buying festivals and switched to markets, sort of just based on hazy intuition and fear of 3 card minion hands with nothing but festivals and greens. Was that a good move or just fear mongering? Again, I think if I had had the presence of mind to buy a couple tacticians once his minion engine was going I could have happily kept scarfing festivals without fear.

Any thoughts appreciated.

ackack:
I think you'd have gotten absolutely annihilated had your opponent been going focused Minions from the start. He ends up with 8 Minions in his deck, but doesn't buy his first until turn 13! Moneylender is a good Minion enabler, because a) you get to 5 often without purchasing Silver that isn't so useful in a Minion deck, b) you clean Coppers out of your deck, c) when you start Minioning you'll see it often. Festival is a fantastic card for a Minion deck, and picking up a couple of Courtyards to keep things running and use more Minions for money instead of drawing is also nice.

I think that Minions plan is so strong that I'd go for that, at the very least to prevent my opponent from steamrolling me if I conceded the whole Minion stack. If I elected not to do that, I wouldn't get Mine. I'd start Silver/Moneylender, spend 5s on Festivals early, grab a couple of Courtyards, and otherwise just money up.

edit: and yes, Tactician would have been a strong addition to your deck, and would also be a better first buy than Festival in the deck I mention in the second paragraph.

Corpsified:
yeah my first instinct on this board was to do minions myself, but as I said i really wanted to just try mines in a colony game as I never had before. Also I often seem to get stuck pretty badly when I build minion decks in colony games, especially if we split the minions as often happens.

ackack:

--- Quote from: Corpsified on September 01, 2011, 12:27:31 pm ---yeah my first instinct on this board was to do minions myself, but as I said i really wanted to just try mines in a colony game as I never had before. Also I often seem to get stuck pretty badly when I build minion decks in colony games, especially if we split the minions as often happens.

--- End quote ---

Playing Minions as a defensive strategy like that is okay, too. With Festivals, even 5 Minions are still pretty viable. And that sort of deck is one where Mine actually makes some sense, because you'll play it very often.

chwhite:
Minion without support can be quite weak in Colony games.  But this board had plenty of Minion support!  Festival, Tactician, Moneylender all make Minion much stronger (and even Courtyard can help too), and give enough action density and firepower to buy Colonies.

OTOH, one thing that makes Minion actually somewhat risky here is the presence of Saboteur.  Normally Saboteur sucks hard, but if both players go Minion and one person adds in a Sab, it's not going to be long before it gets played every turn and starts depleting your all-important Minions, cutting your engine off at its knees.  This probably isn't a reason to avoid Minion, but Minion is definitely a reason to buy or at least consider Sab.

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