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[catsclaw]

When do you go for Bishop, and when is it too slow?  My opponent managed to buy a Grand Market on Turn 5, while I was stuck until turn 11.  Should I have skipped the Bishops? 

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/01/game-20121201-193459-e00035b6.html

[verikt]

You lost because he had a much better deck. There are two reasons to bishop, either for points or to get rid of crap.Trying to win on straight bishop points and ignoring the other cards made no sense here. He could have cleaned up the gms, gone back and bought some golds and bishoped them for 3 to catch up, ignoring the provs. For getting rid of crap it wasn't so bad, if you hadn't built your strategy around it. You could have either bought ironworks turn 3, then picked up hamlets, nvs and silver while bishoping, or buy exclusively silver gold (no actions) while bishoping and compete for gm. You had almost no economy. Look at the difference in coins you produced turns 7, 8 and 10.

[catsclaw]

I was expecting to thin my deck quickly, buy some Grand Markets, and use them to buy then Bishop cards for points.  The problem I ran into was how quickly my opponent started buying Grand Markets; turn 5 was really early.  His deck got going a lot faster than mine, largely because of that.

[DG]

As soon as you buy the bishop the grand markets become more likely to come into play. They are much more likely to come into play for your opponent since
- a terminal action will be safely used on a mine or merchant ship - good grand market enablers
- six coins for a grand market hands are easiest to assemble with 2+2+2 but a bishop only provides +1

So yes, skip the bishop. The acceleration from a good grand market deck is much better than the early bishop points. Top class opponents typically welcome the early trashing you give them, build a better deck, then score more bishop points in the endgame than you scored in the early game

[jonts26]

Your opponent was somewhat lucky to get an early GM. And he rode that to this lopsided victory. Though turn 5 GM isn't THAT lucky.

But let's look at bishop and what it does.

On weak boards, early bishop points tend to matter because there's no way to score multiple provinces late to catch up. On strong boards, the points hardly matter. This board the early points are unlikely to matter. So what else does bishop do?

It actually slows your own early game tempo down. Single card trashing is not all that fast unless you have a way to play the bishop more often. Which you don't. The bishop also only gives you $1 compared to silver's $2. So in a bishop open, the hope is that the early points make up for the slight loss of tempo. Which it won't here.

But the real issue with Bishop here is that the trashing you get, you give your opponent for free. So single card trashing isnt super fast, but when taken for free, it acts to slightly increase early game tempo. This allows him to thin while having superior income. This is why he's able to buy GM early and often. Had he opened Bishop, turn 5 is most likely not a GM for him.