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[Graystripe77]

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201109/05/game-20110905-113319-8a35aaa5.html

I went for early salvagers in this game, hoping to get to platinums as soon as possible before my opponent could start with goons.  Unfortunately, his militias were played nearly every turn, so i thought i was screwed, and decided to switch to a province ending once he bought a couple goons. I'm not sure if it was luck, but i managed a win. Any thoughts?

[Fangz]

He played poorly.

Shanty town is just not sufficient to support a goons strategy on its own, not with trashing as poor as it was here. And even if it were, he played against his own strategy, by buying silvers and so on that further diluted the goons and shanty towns in his deck, and bought provinces to help you deplete the provinces deck. He had little chance.

[chwhite]

This is a marginal set for a Goons engine: Salvager is a fairly slow trasher, and Shanty Town is the worst Village for Goons bar none.  In many sets, Goons is strong enough that even a marginal Goons engine is the right move, but this is probably not that set: Venture is very resilient in the face of hand reduction, so I could see that route winning.

IMO what really tipped the game in your favor, though, was all the Coppers your opponent bought, mucking up his/her engine.  Unless it's the endgame or Watchtower is around, I never *ever* buy Coppers with only one Goon.

[greatexpectations]

thanks for the love guys. 

if i may have a chance to defend myself ... i was actually setting myself up to end on gardens. i will freely admit that it was likely not the best strategy, but i have an affinity for gardens and will try to work a garden strategy just about every time i see them.  flipping through my game logs should reveal that.

anyway, i was looking to end the game on shanty town, gardens, and goons/estates, setting up my deck to clear the piles out in one pass through my deck. personally, i think i had a good chance if graystripe had played for colonies, as it would have given me more turns to finish out my plan. i was pinning him to 3 cards almost every turn and was hoping to get gardens to 5+. trouble was he adjusted his strategy and i couldnt adapt.

and of course, as i discussed with graystripe after the game, buying provinces was likely an erroneous panic move.

[WanderingWinder]

This is a marginal set for a Goons engine: Salvager is a fairly slow trasher, and Shanty Town is the worst Village for Goons bar none.  In many sets, Goons is strong enough that even a marginal Goons engine is the right move, but this is probably not that set: Venture is very resilient in the face of hand reduction, so I could see that route winning.

IMO what really tipped the game in your favor, though, was all the Coppers your opponent bought, mucking up his/her engine.  Unless it's the endgame or Watchtower is around, I never *ever* buy Coppers with only one Goon.

Buying a bunch of coppers when no engine is available in order to backdoor into gardens is reasonable fairly often, but not on a colony board.
With the colonies available and no great support, I probably would have held off on getting goons until nearer the end, what I would figure to be my second or third-to-last reshuffle, probably about the time that I would start prioritizing province over platinum.

[DG]

I think this is quite a tough set. Any strategy will probably have some weaknesses. The salvager is what you really want to use so that you can get fewer quality cards and use some ventures. The militia, goons, and ghost ship really hurt the salvager though by reducing the hand size. The militia just seems like an inferior card to goons as a terminal in your deck. As soon as you get one goons you probably want a lot of goons and the deck stagnates even though it squelches the opponent too. The shanty town seems like it would only work in a productive way with the ghost ship, but the ghost ship has problems in this set too. Ventures could founder on the copper. The coppersmith is dead in the water and the remodel is pretty much superseded by the salvager. It's actually the sort of set that I often lose. Typically my low ranked opponent would just buy a goon on turn 3, buy more and more goons, and I'd have to play every turn with 3 cards and get nowhere extremely slowly.

Here's a question though. Would a secret chamber have useful been here against the goons, setting up the venture play, or just extra clogging of the deck?

[chwhite]

DG's right, this is a tough set to figure.  I'd probably open Salvager and even buy a second; then mostly buy Ventures and Platina when possible but get a Goons or two as well.  Chaining Goons is hard here, but they're still valuable as a kicker, and the extra VP chips might make a difference.