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Minions w/ Colonies attempt leads to heartbreak

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Corpsified:
This game I decided to once again try minions with colonies on board, the kingdom just looked so ripe w/ caravan and festival to power up the minion stack. My opponent even let me have all 10 minions. As you can see the game was very close score-wise. I must admit though that when I ended the game I thought I was winning by a reasonable margin, I was playing too fast and not doing the math in my head and just going off my gut knowing I had a 6-2 colony lead. Heartbreaking.

Anyway, I feel like I must have made some blunders with buys here to result in the loss. Perhaps I bought too much money, there were a couple of turns where I had much more than the $11 I needed. I think having too much money makes it clear as well that I should probably have started buying festivals much earlier, probably long before clearing the minion stack. Any thoughts out there? Where did I go wrong?

Any thoughts, criticisms, or insights welcome as always.

WanderingWinder:
I think your biggest mistake was turn 1 caravan instead of moneylender. Caravan simply isn't that great (it's pretty darn good, just not so great as most people seem to think), especially as an opener, and it really isn't a great enabler for minion. Moneylender, on the other hand IS, and it's also quite good as an opener. I really wouldn't have started pushing into festivals super early, especially in a colony game, as you just won't get so flooded with money that you can't use it all, and if you want to do a minion engine in a colony game, you're gonna need a LOT. OTOH, I don't think it matters all that much - the moneylender is a much bigger deal.

Corpsified:
Yeah i can't even explain that decision. I almost always buy Moneylender when it's available, and it definitely would have helped speed the early game along. I don't know what got into my head to think caravan would be such a great support for minion, but it was only mediocre in the end I think.

What should I be looking for on the board to push me towards a minion engine with colonies? It seems very tricky to get up to $11 with minions without buying more treasure than I'd like and getting lucky draws.

DG:
There is some minion play here. The key supporting cards are the moneylender, warehouse, then festival. The caravans support fairly well but are not essential.

The big fly in the ointment is the opponent's jester. All those coppers probably cost you the game. Even if you keep your deck trimmed with a moneylender, the jester will smuggle some minions or give you curses instead.

HiveMindEmulator:
Yeah, warehouses are infinitely better than caravans in minion decks with limited trashing. You don't mind the "discard 3" part since you're going to be discarding your whole hand with minion anyway, so for the most part it works out to a non-terminal +3 cards.

There were also a lot of turns in which you didn't use the minion attack. I think that by the time you have 3 minions, you should be using them to attack every turn. It's unlikely that what you have in your hand is really so much better than what you're going to draw that you don't want to attack.

In general, the things you look for in a minion kingdom are trashers, cards with +$/+action, cheap non-terminal draw -- even with discarding (warehouse/cellar/menagerie/wishing well), and a lack of other attacks.

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